May 2020

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

It has become commonplace for the Left to go into fits of conniption over things said by President Trump or in response to actions he takes. The latest Democrat outrage against the administration, responding to the president’s moves to weaken the federal Nanny State, however, is worth noting.

What makes this most recent administration initiative especially delightful, is that Trump is turning one of the Democrats’ favorite aphorisms back against them: “You should never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Whether Clinton insider Rahm Emanuel coined the phrase or was simply quoting Winston Churchill, who is alleged to have said this decades earlier, modern leftists have taken the maxim to heart.

Virtually every major crisis our country has confronted in recent years has prompted moves for greater and more costly government involvement in the economy. This has been the case whether the emergencies we face are man-made, such as the 2008 recession, or birthed by Mother Nature as was the case with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, spawned by the novel coronavirus, clearly is no exception.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cadre of liberal and ultra-liberal federal legislators, and their mainstream media mouthpieces, have not for a moment let up in their calls for federal spending and regulatory mandates as the essential tools with which to defend against the virus. In fact, they have become increasingly extreme. The left-wing Guardian recently was moved to declare that the pandemic presents the perfect scenario to “make a greener world.”

It is no exaggeration to conclude that for many on the left, including the prominent New York socialist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the COVID pandemic is considered the crisis by which to de-modernize America and, indeed, the entire world.

Into this scenario has stepped Donald Trump, who last week declared it the official policy of his Administration to use deregulation as fuel for our economic revitalization. The contrast with his Democrat counterparts — whether Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer at the federal level, or Governors Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsome at the state level – could not be starker.

Where Trump aims to spur economic recovery by loosening the regulatory Gordian knot that for decades has served to hamper innovation and weaken economic growth, Democrats believe fervently that our economy remains insufficiently regulated, and that more is needed to defend against the COVID pandemic.

Trump’s strategy for deregulatory stimulus was formally set out in an Executive Order issued just last week. Judging by the howls of dismay the Order elicited from the mainstream media, academics, and liberal think tanks, one easily could conclude that the president was proposing something as radical as returning the United States to the gold standard (actually not a bad idea, but that is a topic for another day). Judged according to the standards of today’s politics, however, the principles in the March 19^th White House document could indeed be considered radical. For example, the president declared:

• Regulations are to be enforced fairly and consistently.
• The overarching goal of federal regulations in this pandemic-restrained era, ought to be to bring our economy back to full strength.
• Economic recovery achieved through “non-regulatory actions” is preferable to the heavy hand of regulatory edicts.
• “Good faith” efforts at compliance by regulated industries should be encouraged rather than punished.
• Federal regulatory “guidance” should be just that – guidance, not mandate.
• The burden of proof for regulatory violations is to be borne by the government.
• Rules of enforcement must be “public, clear, and effective” and penalties, where warranted, should be “proportionate, transparent and  .   .  .  consistent.”
• Government no longer will engage in games of regulatory gotcha.

It is a telling indictment of how far to the left today’s Democratic Party has swung, that these reasonable, common-sense measures should be considered frightening and tyrannical — which makes it all the more crucial that Trump succeed in implementing them.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Blue state governors and blue city mayors are continuing to repeat their “sky-is-falling” outcries that people should be afraid to take a walk in the park without wearing a mask. Bureaucrats are continuing to issue repetitive dire warnings that the country, if not the world, is on the brink of Coronavirus Armageddon.

Thank goodness the scientists at NASA and the entrepreneurs working at Elon Musk’s SpaceX are not basing their actions on such doomsayers as New York City’s Bill de Blasio or California’s Gavin Newsom. We all should be thankful that neither Musk nor NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine are following the inconsistent edicts of Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the exaggerated wailing of Rick Bright, the disgruntled HHS fearmonger who recently was demoted by President Trump.

Weather permitting, just after 4:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon9 heavy rocket booster will lift off from the same launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo 11 crew began their awe-inspiring journey to the moon. This week, nearly 51 years later, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be strapped into a “Crew Dragon” spacecraft chock-full of technology that makes the interior of the Apollo 11 Lunar Command Module, which was state-of-the-art in its time, pale in comparison. They will rendezvous the next day with the International Space Station (ISS).

Wednesday’s launch carries great significance; aside from the fact it is being undertaken while many government agencies and businesses remain afraid to do much of anything.

The launch will be the first time in nearly a decade that American astronauts have been carried into Earth’s orbit aboard an American-made rocket and from American soil. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program nine years ago, and with no follow-on heavy launch vehicle program available to replace it, NASA has been forced to rely on Russian rockets to send our astronauts to the ISS. This embarrassment will end when the Falcon9 rocket, with the Crew Dragon spacecraft at its tip, lifts off.

All of America’s previous manned space programs — the pioneering Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs of the 1960s and early 1970s, the brief 1973-74 Skylab project and the three-decade long Space Shuttle program that lasted from 1981 to 2011 – were launched on rockets owned by the U.S. government. Every American who has flown to the ISS up to now has done so aboard a rocket booster owned by the Russian government.

In a historic milestone, this week’s SpaceX launch will be the very first time astronauts have launched atop a rocket booster that is owned by a private company. An American company.

Trump has indicated he plans to attend the launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. If recent events are any guide, the president will not be wearing a face mask when he watches the historic event; neither, presumably, will Musk or Bridenstine.

It was on May 25, 1961 that President John Kennedy stood before the Congress and urged America to commit itself to what was then a remote dream, of landing men on the moon and returning them safely to the earth before 1970.

Thank goodness that today, precisely 59 years later, with millions of Americans being pummeled daily with dire warnings and exaggerated fears about COVID-19, we have a president, a NASA administrator and a SpaceX CEO (along with thousands of employees at both NASA and SpaceX) who share the mindset of John Kennedy rather than of Anthony Fauci.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Earlier this month – on May Day to be precise – one of the most liberal members of Congress (Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush) introduced a bill that would provide $100 Billion in its first year to jump start the process of “contact tracing” for COVID-19 infected persons. The bill would accomplish this through a proposed army of “mobile health units” and government-authorized visits to “individuals’ residences.”

The bill quickly attracted conservative opposition, due in part because the number assigned to it – H.R. 6666 – is similar to “666,” which is the biblical “mark of Satan.” Predictably, left-wing media sources have been quick to ridicule such characterizations as an easy way to undermine substantive opposition to the measure. Make no mistake, however, the bill is a dangerous piece of legislation, not because of its number, but because of its substance.

H.R. 6666 may not the work of the Devil, but it is the latest in a long line of legislative vehicles pushed by congressional Democrats (and some Republicans) to increase the federal government’s power to gather and database private information on citizens. This helps to accomplish what always has been the ultimate goal of the modern Democratic Party: control of the populace.

In this latest effort, House Democrats have employed the tradecraft for which the Congress has become notoriously adept – hiding the true purpose of legislation behind a façade of protecting people from a known or perceived danger. In this case, the scourge of COVID-19. The avowed purpose of this and similar measures is, of course, not to erode individual privacy, but to “make us safe.”

As with the crafting of the massive, privacy-invasive “USAPATRIOT Act” passed in the days following the 9/11 attacks, H.R. 6666 drafters understand that a catchy title for a piece of legislation can significantly improve chances for its passage, even as it camouflages its true purpose. Thus, the clever title for H.R. 6666 – the “TRACE” Act, or the COVID-19 “Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act.”

Fear of terrorist attacks fueled support for the Patriot Act 19 years ago, and fear of COVID-19 now is driving support for widespread contact tracing.

While support for contact tracing is growing within the government sector as well as among private businesses and the population generally, H.R. 6666 is unlikely to be the legislative vehicle by which such a national contact tracing program is implemented.

Most Republicans would shy away from supporting a contact tracing bill sponsored by Bobby Rush, whose pre-congressional resume includes having served as a founder and leader of the violent Black Panther movement and whose two decades in the House have been characterized by support for the most extreme gun control measures.

Still, the specific provisions within H.R. 6666 pose a very real danger; not only as a stand-alone bill that could be introduced by someone less of an extremist that Rep. Rush, but as a possible amendment that could be slipped into the most recent, massive COVID-19 “stimulus” bill that passed the House last week. The administration already has signaled support for some version of a Phase IV relief package, and whatever that final document looks like, it is certain to be long and complicated, making it a perfect vehicle in which to hide a provision for “contact tracing” similar perhaps to what Rush’s TRACE Act would do.

As disturbing as such measures are in terms of government surveillance and personal privacy, they are gaining support even among Republican legislators. Federal agencies, of course, always are on the lookout for ways to increase data-basing of information about individual citizens.

The TRACE Act already has nearly 60 co-sponsors, mostly the usual suspects from the Democratic Party’s extreme left-wing. Interestingly, however, among its co-sponsors is one of the less extreme members of Speaker Pelosi’s Party — south Georgia’s Sanford Bishop. This is an indication that the actual substance of the bill can attract members not as radical as Rush or Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Tulsi Gabbard.

Tech companies already are busy implementing technology to facilitate and mainstream contact tracing, insofar as the technology has commercial and law enforcement ramifications and appeal far beyond whatever medical benefit its proponents might claim. Those of us who are concerned about the growth of government surveillance and data-basing of personal information must be vigilant against measures like the TRACE Act, regardless of their surface appeal. We must demand the Congress and the Administration aggressively oppose any such measures.

Townhall.com 

by Bob Barr

As President Trump himself tweets (again) in support of 26-year-old firebrand Laura Loomer’s solid congressional campaign to unseat the liberal Democrat incumbent in his home district in Florida (FL-21), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is acting as if the race does not exist. Sadly, it is not unusual for the establishment GOP to look the other way when a movement conservative enters the arena, no matter how strong and promising that candidate may be.

In fact, this race is definitely winnable. Loomer has assembled a campaign team led by veteran operatives with numerous victories under its belt, and she already has proven herself a fundraising juggernaut.

While Loomer may have some rough edges, she is no dummy, and her political backbone is as solid as they come. Loomer made a name for herself as an investigative journalist, building a massive national following of 265,000 supporters on Twitter who rabidly retweeted her work and cheered in support of all that she did. (Twitter then pulled her account and banned her for life, but that is another issue for another day.)

Notwithstanding support from the highest Republican office holder in the land and from numerous other key conservatives, and despite the campaign’s momentum and her “Anti-AOC profile,” the NRCC remains totally silent on Laura Loomer.

The Republican Party’s top way of promoting new candidates is its “Young Guns” program.  The Party’s congressional leaders pick candidates from districts across the nation who meet “the minimum threshold of campaign organization and show potential to achieve greater status.” The program currently lists 103 candidates, but the face of young, telegenic grassroots icon Loomer is noticeably missing.

Loomer’s campaign has raised over a half million dollars since declaring her candidacy late last year, which would place her at the top of the crop of “Young Guns” in fundraising.

Importantly, her campaign team is a serious one, appearing to meet all the NRCC requirements to be considered a targeted race. In addition to raising major dollars, Loomer is surrounded by well-known and widely respected political professionals, led by Karen Giorno. Giorno lives in the district, is a veteran of five presidential campaigns, and truly came of political age in George H.W. Bush’s White House.

Giorno proved her political chops in March 2016 when she was instrumental in winning the Florida primary for Donald Trump (with the formidable state operations of people like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio aligned openly against her). This arguably was the victory that put Trump in the White House.

Then there is Loomer’s general counsel, Charlie Spies. Spies is no slouch when it comes to knowledge of election law and procedures, having served in several major roles including a stint as election law counsel for the Republican National Committee.

But even with this array of talent and money behind her, the NRCC play callers continue to ignore Loomer’s campaign.

The problem for the NRCC cannot be that Loomer has not won the support of major national Republican leaders. She has been endorsed already by several bona fide GOP luminaries, including sitting Congressman Paul Gosar, nationally syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, actress Roseanne Barr, and even one of Hollywood’s very few vocal conservatives, Chuck Woolery.

The truth is, the NRCC and the GOP in general are simply scared to death of Laura Loomer. Their fear is based not on any legitimate reason; it is simply that Loomer is a true conservative with the moxie to shake up the Establishment.

It is worth a reminder that this is the same Republican Establishment that four years ago opposed Donald Trump’s nomination until it became obvious he was going to win regardless. Voters who have been around as long as I have might also recall that Ronald Reagan did not enjoy support of the GOP Establishment throughout much of his years-long campaign to win his Party’s nomination.

In this sense, Loomer is in good company. But should she lose her race as a result of Beltway Republican opposition, it will only remind voters that when push comes to shove, many in the top ranks of the national GOP value doctrinaire subservience above all else.

Laura Loomer is not someone to be “seen and not heard,” and for a Republican the Party struggling to strengthen its numbers in the House, that is – or should be – a darned good thing.

Daily Caller

By Bob Barr

In Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty told Alice that whenever he used a word, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” In today’s political discourse, the problem is not so much that people attach their own subjective meaning to words; the problem is words and phrases no longer have any meaning attached to them. Words and phrases have become untethered from objective reality. One of the latest victims of this craziness is the “presumption of innocence.”

Even though the term “presumption of innocence” does not appear in our Constitution, it is among the most significant legal principles undergirding our constitutional republic. It has been one of the pillars of western civilization going back to ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and is a key element of British common law we inherited from our prior colonial bosses.

While the phrases “presumption of innocence” and “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” may flow easily from the lips of most citizens, increasingly there is little or no understanding behind the words; and no patience to engage in the process needed to ensure evidence of guilt overcomes the presumption of innocence. To a large degree, this troubling situation is born of the deeply polarized political environment that has swept over our society in recent years; threatening to unravel a legal system that has long served to protect individual liberty against abuse by both government and private actors.

Herd mentality that presumes an opponent guilty without concern for the evidence, or that presumes a supporter innocent regardless of the evidence, has become a hallmark of contemporary public policy debate. It was not always so.

Just two generations ago, for example, when President Richard Nixon faced a political fight to the death over his Administration’s Watergate transgressions, there were vicious personal charges levelled against him. Ultimately, however, the “better angels of our nature” (as Abraham Lincoln eloquently put it) prevailed in the Congress and in our courts and triumphed over the poison of partisan division. Contrast that episode with the manner by which conservative jurist Clarence Thomas was eviscerated by the Left during his 1991 confirmation hearings.

Things have only accelerated downward since then.

In today’s toxic atmosphere, the merest hint of transgression becomes not a predicate for investigation or debate, but a clarion call to convict and destroy. At no time in modern history has this scorched earth strategy been more starkly displayed than during the 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In defending against the sordid accusations of sexual misconduct levelled against him – charges that were devoid of any substantive evidence — Kavanaugh was never afforded the “presumption of innocence” to which he was entitled. In its place was constructed a “presumption of truth” that clothed his accuser, and a “presumption of guilt” hung around his neck (which remains to this day).

While this troubling scenario may be more noticeably and constantly on display by those on the Left, whose adherents take as a point of pride their all-consuming hatred for Donald Trump, many conservatives have fallen prey to this reason-crippling virus.

Less than two years after the Kavanaugh spectacle, Joe Biden finds himself on the hot seat, facing a nearly two-decade old charge of sexual misconduct by a former Senate staffer. Republicans are absolutely right in charging Biden’s defenders with hypocrisy in failing to afford the former vice president’s accuser the same “presumption of truth” granted Kavanaugh’s accuser. However, when Biden’s Republican opponents rush to defend his accuser and label the former vice president “guilty,” they fall into the same trap for which they criticize their opposite numbers — jumping to conclusions based not on principled notions of due process and reasoned debate, but on partisan status and strident ideology.

Navigating crucial disagreements involving politics, law and social policy is essential if we are to maintain a free but ordered society. In today’s hyper partisan environment, however, this becomes virtually impossible. The ultimate victim in this troubling situation is no single candidate or election, but something far more valuable. What is at risk is the ability as a free society to protect any one of us — Democrat, Republican or Independent — from abusive actions by government and private actors alike.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

By Bob Barr

On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham is holding a Judiciary Committee hearing to consider “Examining Liability During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The subject could not be more timely or important.

When Sen. Graham and I served together on the House Judiciary Committee 18 years ago, we understood that in the aftermath of 9/11 the threat of lawsuits was an impediment to innovators developing the antiterrorism tools that America needed to remain safe and secure. That is why we came together with the rest of the Congress to pass the SAFETY Act of 2002, which granted liability protections to companies developing antiterrorism technologies.

The SAFETY Act worked extremely well in the years following those attacks, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to approve over 1,000 critical technologies and services to fight terrorism. Now, Graham appears ready to lean on this precedent, to safeguard the innovators and public servants experiencing similar anxieties as they strive to meet the challenges presented by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Graham has long recognized the need for lasting reform of our legal system. Just last year, he remarked that, “litigation abuse is real” and that “class action reform is something we probably should look at.” But while long term reorganization of the legal system is a matter necessitating long and careful study, the need for a COVID-19 liability shield is as urgent as any we ever have faced.

The Washington Post even conceded in a recent column that, “Fear of covid-19 lawsuits is not mere Republican reflex,” suggesting that now is the time for bipartisan action.

Just as counterterrorism specialists were most at risk of abusive litigation after 9/11, frontline health care workers are now the primary targets of such suits during this public health crisis. But nursing homes that followed government orders to accept contagious patients, and emergency room doctors and nurses who were forced to make tough decisions while having to cope with shortages of supplies and equipment, should not now have to worry about costly liability lawsuits.

Moreover, private sector innovators trying mightily to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 should not be hampered in such vital work because of potential lawsuits.

While the health care industry may be target number one, no business is immune from what Sen. Mitch McConnell has described as “the lawsuit pandemic.” The Washington Post recently provided a lengthy list of frivolous suits that already are rippling through businesses across the country. As the Post describes the situation: “Airlines have been sued over grounded flights; ticket brokers have been sued over canceled events; insurers have been sued over coverage limits; grocers and Internet retailers have been sued over rising prices; .  .  .  universities have been sued over campus closures; amusement parks have been sued over unusable season passes; ski resorts have been sued over refunds.”

Even now, as governors begin to pull back from emergency measures and spark our economic recovery, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes that legal liability has many businesses thinking twice about opening back up. Given the widespread uncertainties about the future of the virus, their concerns are most certainly valid.

In recent weeks, some Democrat and Republican governors have passed liability protection measures, but these vary widely in scope. A patchwork quilt of such protective measures that vary from state to state is simply not the best way to address the problems created by this emergency which is, by every measure, national.

The Congress has a clear responsibility to set the parameters and to provide consistent protections across all needed facilities, providers, and businesses. It has done this before, and it must do so now, in this national emergency.

As Sen. Graham’s Judiciary Committee colleague, Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), summed it up on an April 29th Fox News interview: “We passed liability protections after 9/11. If we don’t do it here, then [Congress] is directly responsible for shutting down businesses that are essential businesses that are critical to the recovery.”

A COVID liability shield will not stop all virus litigation, and nor should it. Still, it will curtail many frivolous suits against America’s pandemic responders by making proof of negligence and recklessness the predicate standard necessary to pursue claims. This worked after 9/11, and it will work again if Congress steps up to the plate and acts. America’s doctors, nurses, nursing homes, innovators and businesses are counting on it.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

How much does silence cost? For China, it is at least $180 billion, which is how much the Chinese have spent in American investments over the last decade and a half, in sectors ranging from real estate to sports and entertainment. There is a financial incentive to such investments, of course, but the biggest and best return for the Chinese government may be the reluctance of American institutions to bite the hand that feeds them.

It is an investment strategy that has paid off well for the Chinese Communist Party, particularly among leftist institutions in our country. Organizations that never seem to have issue finding fault with America are noticeably quiet when it comes to China.

Take, for instance, last October when Daryl Morey, general manager for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, tweeted support for the Hong Kong protestors. If it were a tweet about social justice or paying NCAA athletes, it likely would have been little noticed.  However, because the tweet was indirectly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, it created significant backlash for the NBA, ultimately costing them hundreds of millions of dollars as games were blacked out in China as punishment. Although the league did, at least, resist calls from China to fire Morey, the message from Beijing was clear – keep your mouth shut or risk losing a billion dollars in deals.

Hollywood also remains firmly seated on the pro-China bandwagon. Movie actors and industry big wigs are notorious for their rants against America, routinely turning the Oscars into one long Democrat Party stump speech.  No similar criticism is leveled at China, and the reason for this silence is obvious.

Over the last decade, Chinese firms have invested billions of dollars to fund movie productions and to purchase entire movie studios and theater chains.  This strategy has provided China significant influence over the U.S. movie and entertainment industry. Scripts are frequently edited to appease Chinese censors who can block movies from the lucrative Chinese market. For example, producers of 2013’s “World War Z” removed a reference to the zombie-causing virus originating in China, hoping to avoid issues with Chinese censors.

Even educational institutions in the United States, the supposed bastions of free and open inquiry, are not immune from China’s financial pressure. Harvard University, which has received $93 million from China over the years, canceled a panel on the Hong Kong protests out of fear of upsetting China. The Washington Free Beacon notes that Harvard’s gifts from China, significant as they are, represent just a small cut of the $900 million in Chinese gifts to U.S. academia since 2013.

China’s financial tentacles extending into the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, however, go far beyond sports, entertainment and academia.

Nearly every critical U.S. industry today is buffered with either Chinese investments directly or driven by the lust for reaching the massive Chinese market – or both. Principles such as free speech and respect for basic human rights that are supposed to be at the core of Western civilization, are routinely ignored in fawning efforts to appease Chinese benefactors.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current COVID-19 pandemic. That the COVID-19 virus originated in China is a matter of fact and science.  Just as clear are the deliberate actions of the CCP that contributed to its global spread. Yet, despite the disproportionate impact of the virus on at-risk communities as well as among minority groups in the U.S., barely a peep of criticism has come from leftist institutions.

Not only have these China-centric institutions remained noticeably silent in leveling even mild criticism at China for its central role in the global pandemic, but they have actually hampered efforts to combat the virus, by burying the truth of China’s role in the virus’ spread. Those who openly discuss facts about China’s responsibility for the pandemic’s origin and spread, are loudly accused of “racism” and “xenophobia.” Ben Rhodes, an Obama apologist, criticized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week saying it incited “bigotry against Asians” to criticize China’s substandard track record with labs and resulting global outbreaks of viruses.

Fortunately, long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Trump Administration was taking action to address the influence of Chinese dollars on American institutions. The embarrassingly brazen complicity of leftists institutions from the Hollywood hills to Boston Commons in carrying water for the Chinese, protecting them from even the slightest criticism, shows exactly what Trump is up against here at home, in holding China accountable for its crimes.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Much has been reported in recent days about the manner in which the FBI “trapped” President Trump’s former National Security Adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, into lying in an early 2017 interview. Under federal law, it is strikingly easy for unethical federal officials to successfully play a game of legal “gotcha” with individuals they decide to target. This is precisely why we must insist on maintaining the highest ethical standards for federal investigators and prosecutors, which tragically did not happen in Flynn’s case.

What the FBI — then under the leadership of the since-discredited James Comey – did to Gen. Flynn constitutes a blatant violation of the most basic ethical principles which federal investigators and prosecutors are sworn to uphold. The fundamental ethical foundation according to which these men and women, including Comey and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller — whose office prosecuted Flynn — is best captured in a speech delivered by then-Attorney General Robert Jackson in early 1940.

Jackson’s remarks, delivered at the Justice Department to the assembled United States Attorneys, concluded with this eloquent statement supposed to undergird the duties of these powerful officials:

“The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”

Revelations in just the past week illustrate how completely government agents strayed from Jackson’s admonition in their case against Flynn: targeting him for partisan political reasons when there was no evidence of any underlying violation of any U.S. law, cleverly lulling him into a sense of confidence that he was discussing matters of mutual interest with fellow employees of the same administration and finally springing the trap shut by threatening the one thing the agents knew would be more important to the him than even his own career – that of his son.

The first vehicle by which the federal agents targeted Flynn was something known as the Logan Act, a centuries old but never used federal law prohibiting civilians from engaging in diplomacy with foreign governments. Not only was there no evidence to justify an investigation of Flynn beyond even a preliminary inquiry into whether this law had been violated, but it would not even apply to an official in his position.

Ultimately, the noose Mueller’s band of partisan prosecutors hung around Flynn’s neck is a law that often is used by federal attorneys – 18 U.S.C. §1001.  This is the single count to which Flynn plead guilty in late 2017 (and for which he still awaits sentencing). It is this non-descript law that is in many respects a “prosecutor’s best friend” because of its broad scope.

Make no mistake, this section of the federal criminal code is legitimate and serves a valuable public purpose if properly utilized. In essence, the provision makes it a felony to “knowingly and willfully” lie to a federal agent. Unlike a number of other, similar federal and state crimes such as perjury, however, a person can be convicted of violating “Section 1001” (as the section is commonly known) without having been first placed under oath; hence its broad reach.

This “1001” language also can be found in the small print on almost every federal form that individuals sign, including most banking forms, federal assistance paperwork and so forth. It truly is a trap for the unwary and the dishonest. Its use in the Flynn case, however, demonstrates that a legitimate and well-intended law, when placed in the hands of overly zealous investigators and prosecutors, becomes a cudgel by which federal agents can punish those with whom they disagree.

Hopefully, Bill Barr, the current Attorney General of the United States, will heed his predecessor’s 1940 admonition, and bring to justice those who so blatantly abused their positions of trust in targeting Gen. Flynn.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.