‘The Constitution is not on Barr’s side’ — and Jerry Nadler is the one defending it

Attorney General William Barr’s devotion to President Donald Trump was evident not only in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1, but also, in his flat-out refusal to testify at a closed-door House Judiciary Committee hearing held the following day. And journalist Nichols, in an article for The Nation, explains why House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler — not Barr — is the one standing up for the U.S. Constitution.

“The relationship with Congress that Barr demands is not the relationship that the Constitution demands,” Nichols asserts.

The federal government of the United States, Nichols observes, was carefully founded on a system of checks and balances — and Nadler, with his probes of President Donald Trump, is doing his part to keep the executive branch in check. “Anyone who knows anything about the system of checks and balances knows that the Constitution is not on Barr’s side,” Nichols stresses. “It is on the side of Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler as he pushes back against a compromised attorney general and the lawless president Barr serves. This is a serious student of the Constitution declaring that the legislative branch of our federal government has a duty to reassert itself as the essential overseer of an out-of-control executive branch.”

Nichols concludes his piece by emphasizing that the conflict between Barr and Nadler speaks volumes about how they view the U.S. Constitution—and that Nadler is fulfilling his duty by trying to prevent Trump from governing as a “monarch.”

“This is not a clash between men,” Nichols writes. “This is a clash between two understandings of how the United States will be governed.”