Laura Ingraham aired a portion of her interview last night with AG Barr where he explained why Trump was absolutely right to fire Michael Atkinson:
I’ve got the video cued up to 2:48 where this portion begins. Below is a quote of Barr’s comments:
I think the president did the right thing in removing Atkinson. From the vantage point of the Department of Justice he had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people, and tried to turn it in to a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately report it to Congress without letting the Executive Branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem.
He was told this in a letter from the Department of Justice and he is obliged to follow the interpretation of the Department of Justice and he ignored it. So, I think the president was correct in firing him.
Trump has caught a lot of flack from the media and Democrats for dumping Atkinson, but from what Barr says it sounds like Trump was quite justified in Atkinson’s firing. Of course it would have been nice to hear this from Trump…
When Ingraham mentioned that people are attacking Trump over this firing, saying this proves he doesn’t want any watchdogs, Barr simply replied “I think he wants responsible watchdogs.”