https://www.newsweek.com/so-many-conflicts-so-little-time-1396435


This much is known: On Barr’s public financial disclosure report, he admits to working for a law firm that represented Russia’s Alfa Bank and for a company whose co-founders allegedly have long-standing business ties to Russia. What’s more, he received dividends from Vector Group, a holding company with deep financial ties to Russia.

These facts didn’t get much attention during Barr’s confirmation hearing, as Congress was hyperfocused on an unsolicited memo Barr wrote prior to his nomination, which criticized the special counsel’s investigation—and whether he would release an unredacted Mueller report to Congress. Much of the information is public, but it has so far been unreported in relation to Barr.

Still, Barr’s potential conflicts could face further scrutiny as Democrats in Congress fight to have the Mueller report released to the public.

By the time you read this, the report may indeed be in the hands of Congress. But legal battles are expected over how much of the document will be redacted to protect grand jury material and other information. And no matter what appears in Barr’s color-coded version of the report, his motives will continue to be questioned.

“All of this raises the need for further inquiry from an independent review, not a Department of Justice investigation,” Michael Frisch, ethics counsel for Georgetown University’s law school and an expert in professional ethics, tells Newsweek . Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project for Government Oversight, says that Barr is probably playing within the rules. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t recuse himself.

“He’s not doing anything illegal. is it good practice, given that he might have been involved with these entities in private practice? Probably not,” Amey added.

The Department of Justice did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Nonetheless, here’s a pocket guide to Barr’s Russian connections.

Vector Group
On his financial disclosure report, Barr notes that he earned anywhere from $5,001 to $15,000 in dividends from the Vector Group.

The company’s president, Howard Lorber, brought Trump to Moscow in the 1990s to seek investment projects there. The trip is widely seen as the first of many attempts to establish a Trump Tower in Moscow.

The problem, says Shugerman, “is the appearance of bias.”

He added that Donald Trump Jr. “allegedly called Lorber as he was setting up the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian . Lorber has extensive ties to Russia and was allegedly assisting with Trump Tower Moscow plans. On top of Barr’s other choices, which reflect partisan bias, it is bad judgment…to have any financial ties to a person so directly entangled with Trump, Don Jr. and the core of events and questions of the Russia investigation.”

Alfa Bank
Barr’s former law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he was counsel from March 2017 until he was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019, represented Russia’s Alfa Bank. (Barr earned more than $1 million at Kirkland.)

Barr also supervises, at Justice, another Kirkland & Ellis alumnus with Alfa ties. Early last year, Trump nominated Kirkland & Ellis partner Brian Benczkowski to the Justice Department’s criminal division. In his role with the law firm, Benczkowski had represented Alfa Bank and supervised an investigation into suspicious online communications between the bank and servers belonging to the Trump Organization.

Investigators found no evidence that the Trump Organization had communicated with Alfa. Still, the bank is partially owned by Russian oligarch German Khan, whose son-in-law, the London-based lawyer Alexander van der Zwaan, was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to investigators about a report his firm had written for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Benczkowski was confirmed last July as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division.

“In terms of a lawyer’s professional codes, it’s definitely legally significant if is in counsel position,” Frisch tells Newsweek . “If he is counsel to the company and he isn’t personally working on a matter but the company is, the company’s conflicts are imputed to him.”



America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.