Attorney General nominee Barr on collision course with history

On the day before July 4, 1973,  George Beall, then the attorney in Baltimore, drove to Washington, D.C. to brief the new attorney general on a criminal investigation known to only a handful of people in the country.

Elliot Richardson had been sworn in as President Richard Nixon's third attorney general just six weeks earlier. He was already consumed with the Watergate scandal that would ultimately take down Nixon, and he could not conceal his initial annoyance at the distraction Beall and the three assistant prosecutors he'd brought with him represented.

But as the purpose of their visit became clear, Richardson's irritation turned to horror.

What Maryland's top prosecutor and his subordinates described for the new AG was persuasive evidence that the sitting Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was conducting an ongoing bribery and extortion scheme from inside the White House, on whose premises Agnew had personally accepted enveloped stuffed with thousands of dollars of cash.

More:Why Trump won't be impeached

More:Ronna Romney McDaniel blasts uncle Mitt Romney for criticizing Trump

Richardson, who knew Nixon's presidency might not survive the investigation the Justice Department's newly appointed special prosecutor was conducting into the president's own criminal activity, instantly grasped the significance of Beall's bombshell: If Nixon were impeached or forced to resign, he might be succeeded by a vice president who had been on the take since his days as the Baltimore County's executive.

Where the buck really stops

What Richardson did next — revealed in "Bagman," an astonishing, seven-part podcast aired late in 2018 by NBC News — is the reason Agnew never became president.

But Richardson's conduct in that critical moment also underlines the importance of the confirmation hearings that began Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol, where members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will likely vote this week to confirm William Barr as the country's latest attorney general.

Like Richardson before him, Barr is poised to assume command of the Justice Department in the shadow of a metastasizing criminal investigation into the man who nominated him for the job. 

And like Richardson, Barr began his first day of Senate scrutiny by assuring his interrogators that he will defend the integrity of that investigation with his professional life.

Barr's impressive resume includes a previous stint as attorney general under the first President Bush, and the Judiciary Committee's Democratic minority hasn't the wherewithal to block his nomination this time around, whatever doubts they may harbor about him.

But in her first round of questions Tuesday, ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California was determined to get Barr's assurances that he would defend the Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller against President Trump's unremitting assault.     

“I am in a position in life where I can provide the leadership necessary to protect the independence and reputation of the department,” Barr, who is 68, told committee members. He promised never to fire Mueller unless he violated Justice Department regulations, and said he would resign rather than carry out any presidential order he deemed improper. 

That, of course, is exactly what you'd expect anyone seeking Senate confirmation as the nation's top law enforcement officer to say. But it's not a nothing, either — especially from the lips of a lawyer whose four decades of public service have so far been untainted by anything dishonorable.

A special man  

Richardson, whose reputation was similarly spotless when he was nominated to the AG's job, made a nearly identical promise during his own confirmation hearings in the spring of 1973. It was honoring that public pledge to protect the independence of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor he hired to investigate Watergate, that prompted Richardson to resign after just five months later rather than carry out Nixon's order to fire Cox.

It is that principled resignation — the first in a series of Justice Dept. departures that became known as Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre — for which Richardson is remembered by historians, and revered by career prosecutors to this day.

But his highly public exit was foreshadowed by a more private act, no less consequential, whose circumstances would become widely known only 45 years later when the assistant prosecutors who accompanied Attorney George Beall to his July 1973 meeting were interviewed for NBC's "Bagman" podcast.

Barney Skolnik, then an assistant U.S. attorney who was in his early 30s, had never met Richardson when he followed Beall into the new AG's office that summer day. But he knew Richardson had the authority to stop the investigation of Agnew, and the team of prosecutors Skolnik led, in their tracks. 

"I had a very conscious, not just realization that it was possible, but that under all the circumstances, it was highly likely that he was going to say — perhaps for the most honorable of reasons — I mean, he probably wouldn't say 'Shut it down,' but he could say words that would amount to 'shut it down,' " Skolnik recalled in the podcast.

Instead, Skolnik and his colleague say, Richardson immediately began digging into their case — making it clear that he intended to be their protector, not their opponent.

"This is something about which I can get very emotional," Skolnik told an NBC producer in an interview recorded last year. ". . .Within the first few minutes of being with him, I knew, I think we all knew, that we were in the presence of a very special human being."

A legacy greater than power 

The Agnew investigation proceeded unimpeded, notwithstanding concerted efforts by a myriad Republicans (including Beall's older brother, a Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland; and George H.W. Bush, then the ambitious chair of the Republican National Committee) to derail it. It culminated in a plea deal tied to Agnew's resignation on Oct. 10, 1973, less than a month before Richardson's own departure. 

Skolnik and his colleagues conclude, with more than ample justification, that only Richardson's integrity precluded Agnew's succession to the Oval Office, paving the way for Gerald Ford's presidency.  

Everybody watching, including the nominee himself, knows that Barr's confirmation would catapult him into circumstances every bit as challenging as the ones that ended Richardson's tenure after less than six months. How he conducts himself in that crucible is likely to furnish the first line of his obituary. 

It's not an exaggeration to say that the future of constitutional government may depend on Barr's ability to keep the promises he made under oath Tuesday. What senators who vote to confirm him will be gambling on is that he cares more about history's verdict than about Donald Trump's approval.

Brian Dickerson is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.