Attorney General William Barr three times now has tread on the dangerous ground of asserting that the president can assess his own guilt or innocence and, by extension, of the culpability of underlings as well.

Barr’s claims are meretricious nonsense.

The first assertion came by implication, but not fully stated, in Barr’s April 18 press conference before he released the Mueller report on Russian malfeasance. The next two, from his May 1 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, were quite explicit.

Barr’s prepared press conference remarks ascribed “non-corrupt motives” to President Trump’s consideration of impeding Mueller’s probe, on the theory that Trump “was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” even though “there was in fact no collusion.”

Yet frustration and anger provide no legal excuse for impeding a lawful investigation, and Barr has acknowledged the investigation was lawful. So how does this provide Trump any excuse?

In his May 1 testimony, Barr was more specific on two separate occasions. “If the president is being falsely accused … and he knew [the accusations against him] were false, and he felt this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for [exercising constitutional authority] for replacing an independent counsel.”

In later testimony, Barr said: “With the president, who has a constitutional authority to supervise proceedings, if in fact a proceeding … was based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course. The president could terminate that proceeding and it would not be corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused, and he would be worried about the impact on his administration.”

Richard Nixon surely thought the Watergate investigation was a witch hunt. Yet when he wanted to fire the special prosecutor conducting it, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy both resigned. Then Congress immediately began impeachment proceedings.

Barr is a different sort of attorney general. His assertions are wrongheaded and possibly dangerous on multiple levels. The first is on principle alone: No man, not even the president, should be allowed to adjudge his own case. Otherwise, he’s a tyrant. The very notion of such power runs counter to the entire basis of America’s constitutionally limited government and its history of fighting a revolution to jettison a king.

Second, to the extent Barr is making more limited claims that a president has constitutional power to fire a constitutionally inferior officer (rather than to stop an entire investigation), he ignores the reality that even the powers granted by the Constitution are limited in both law and custom. Furthermore, any “intent” to impede an otherwise lawfully operating investigation on the basis of one’s own supposed innocence is to violate the first principle above. To violate a constitutional-historical principle as important as that one is inherently corrupt.

Third, Barr’s statements produce an absurd logical consequence. In practice, even if Trump knew with God-like omniscience that he was personally guilty of no legal offense, and is thus justified in Barr’s mind to stop the investigation, he might also be killing an investigation into others — say, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, and more than a dozen Russian spies or other alleged criminals who worked illegally to undermine a U.S. election. Is Barr maintaining that this is also acceptable?

Remember, the Mueller investigation was only ever secondarily about Trump (or even Trump’s aides and relatives). The first official instruction given to Mueller was to “ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.” If Trump killed that proceeding even to keep it from “hampering his ability to govern,” he would be undermining the entire nation’s ability to protect itself from illegal Russian meddling.

In the end, there can be no innocent motive for, or innocent effect from, an attempt to halt a duly constituted investigation operating under proper constitutional safeguards. This is so even if a president’s political opponents are misusing the existence of the investigation for their own illegitimate purposes.

If William Barr really thinks otherwise, he should not be attorney general.

DENVER (AP) — Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone was shaken Tuesday by the

school shooting

that occurred in his neighborhood a few hours before his team’s playoff game against the Portland Trail Blazers.

“That’s a community I live in. I know thoughts and prayers are never enough, but … from myself, our team, our organization, our thoughts and prayers with all those families, students, school administrators, everybody that was there today,” Malone said in a

heartfelt pregame news conference

. “It’s a tragedy.”

Sheriff’s officials said an 18-year-old male student was killed and several students were wounded in the shooting at a STEM School Highlands Ranch, which is about 15 miles south of the Pepsi Center, where the Nuggets play.

Authorities have taken two students into custody after the shooting in the affluent community of Highlands Ranch near where two students shot and killed 13 people at Columbine High School 20 years ago.

Malone said Tuesday’s shooting happened minutes from his house in the Highlands Ranch community.

“It’s not just Highlands Ranch. It’s not just Colorado. This is an epidemic. It continues to happen,” Malone said. “That’s the frustrating thing. How do you stop it? Again, gun control, laws, whatever it might be — I’m not a politician; I don’t want to sit up here on a soap box. I just want everybody back in Highlands Ranch to know we’re with you. That’s really important for them to know.”

Malone said his wife contacted him Tuesday afternoon to tell him about the shooting. The couple has two daughters who attend school nearby.

“The thing that makes you angry is that she’s telling me how scared my daughters are in their schools, texting her,” Malone said. “They didn’t know what’s going on. They just saw lockout. Where is this shooter? Is it at our school? Some other school?

“When kids go to school, they should be going to school to learn, have fun, be with their friends, not be worried about an active shooter.”

Malone was leery of addressing the tragedy with his team before Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals, saying it’s a “conversation and a subject maybe on an off day.”
“These are scary times for everybody and you have to find a way to be mentally tough and get through it,” Malone said. “It’s just frustrating. It makes you angry. It hits home. That’s how I felt today.”

Weighing on him was how to address the shooting with his children.

“Great question,” Malone said. “I’m texting my daughter, telling her she’s going to be OK. I don’t even know if she will be OK. This is every parent’s worst nightmare. When you see your kids go to school in the morning, it’s, ‘Have a great day’ and (you) assume everything is going to be all right.”

President Trump made $5.7 billion into a magic number when he claimed that was what’s needed to secure the border. Democrats are never going to give him that amount. If Trump had simply focused on the policy of keeping the country safe, and not on a particular number, he might already be out of the current shutdown showdown with a win.

Instead, he latched on to the number and made his arguments as much about securing a dollar amount as the end goal. That primed his supporters to use billions to measure his success.

He refused to support a bipartisan compromise in February 2018 that would have given him $25 billion over 10 years, including $2.5 billion that year. Trump then rejected a stopgap spending bill in December that would have prevented a shutdown and left more time for lawmakers to reach a deal. Instead, he told now Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “ I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”

The government did shut down, and even if Trump kept up his facade of pride, lawmakers didn’t. The stunt was an avoidable fiasco and everyone was relieved when Trump announced that he’d reopen the government to jump-start new negotiations.

Now, with the deadline to fund the government coming up once again, lawmakers on Monday night worked out a compromise to avert another painful and wasteful shutdown.

That deal would keep the government open and give Trump a chunk of money, $1.375 billion to be precise, for his border wall. It’s certainly not what the White House wanted, but it would prevent another costly shut down and get some of his wall built.

Trump should take it while he can. He should make a show of accepting the compromise, hold himself up as a leader, and then do a nice photo op as soon as construction starts at the border. He should talk up how he is building the wall, that he wants Congress involved, and how the $1.375 billion is simply a down payment, sure to be re-upped once everyone sees how well it works.

By all accounts, that would be a victory for the president marred only, of course, by the shutdown that didn’t seem so necessary after all.

But to pull that off, he’d have to stop talking about $5.7 billion as if extracting the money from Congress, dollar by dollar if necessary, was as important as starting to fix real issues at the border. Unilateral demands for money it turns out are not great material for the policy compromise necessary to keep the government running.