When Trump installed Bill Barr as his attorney general, most conservatives thought this was a good thing.  Barr was seen as a straight shooter who had come out of retirement to help clean up the Justice Department that Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch had corrupted and that Jeff Sessions had been helpless to repair.  In his two years in office, he's accomplished some excellent things but much less than conservatives had hoped he would.  Things went haywire today, though, when Barr said the DOJ has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."  What?!

Barr made that statement during an interview with AP, which is resolutely anti-Trump.  Indeed, although the article purports to be an interview with Barr, most of it is another mean girl–style AP article that attacks Trump and his supporters.  In the whole article, there's only one other quotation from Barr that comes from the current interview (as opposed to recycled quotations from prior interviews):

There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven't seen anything to substantiate that.

The same article relays that Barr appointed U.S. attorney John Durham as special counsel back in October in order to allow Durham to continue to investigate the Trump-Russia hoax (the AP calls it a "probe") after Biden moves into the White House.  In theory, a special counsel is hard to fire, but that's only if you're Trump.  We know that if Biden wants to fire Durham, Durham will be gone in minutes, with the media throwing rocks at him on his way out.

So what's the story here?  In 2019, Barr got off to a good start by ending the Russia hoax.  He's also spoken out forcefully about religious freedom.  And it wasn't his fault that after he agreed that the case against General Flynn should be dismissed, a corrupt judge violated all applicable legal principles to keep the case alive.  Still, I can't help noticing that every person who perverted the American intelligence system is thriving with television appearances and lucrative book deals.

Also, Barr's statements during the interview that the DOJ and DHS have not seen either evidence of fraud or evidence sufficient to change the election outcome make no sense.  There's been a mountain of eyewitness evidence that fraud occurred on such a large scale that it would easily affect the outcome of the election.

Gateway Pundit has been best at tracking the fraud stories, so here are just some examples from the last 48 hours:

• Truckloads of ballots arrived in Arizona 10 days after vote-counting seemingly ended.
• Biden ballots in Michigan were scanned 8 to 10 times.
• Over 100,000 Wisconsin late ballots backdated to November 3.
• Dominion, by failing to pay taxes, was not allowed to operate in Missouri.
• Michigan poll watcher watched dollies full of Biden ballots arrive at 4 a.m.
• Two trailers full of completed ballots went from Pennsylvania to New York, with one traveling on November 4.
• Georgia election officials alleged filmed destroying evidence.
• Michigan and Georgia campaign operatives tampered with military ballots.

The above list not only does not include the preceding three weeks of eyewitness evidence from across the contested states, but also doesn't touch upon all the statistical and mathematical testimony.  There is a lot of evidence.

What Barr could have quibbled with is whether the evidence can be trusted.  However, to date, no one has done so.  Media leftists have simply announced that there is no evidence or that it's been "debunked," without actually debunking it.  Could Bar have committed the same fallacy of discounting the evidence without weighing its veracity or probative value?

Interestingly, Trump did not brutally attack Barr, opting to say nothing. Instead, Trump's legal team simply pointed out, "with all due respect," that the DOJ hadn't bothered yet to conduct an investigation.

Trump's unusual silence may mean we're watching a magician's misdirection.  This school of thought says the real investigative work has been taking place far from the swamp in which Barr finds himself — and Trump wants to keep it that way.  By having Barr make a technically accurate statement, which is that his Justice Department hasn't seen anything, Trump can keep the media from paying attention to just how much evidence there really is.

If this is indeed the game Barr and Trump are playing, it's a dangerous one.  Magic tricks that distract the audience's attention had better be good.  Otherwise, the audience will walk out praising the good-looking magician's assistant while having nothing but disdain for the magician whose trick failed.

I'm holding off on judging Barr, especially because the 24-hour rule should apply to anything the drive-by media report.  With every passing hour, though, if Trump doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat, it's going to look very much as if Barr, rather than fighting the swamp, decided to take a relaxing swim in it.

Image: Bill Barr interview with Catherine Herridge.  YouTube screen grab.