Trump administration folks usually wait to get this candid until they leave

Wednesday, in the course of a post on the double whammy of the Roger Stone sentence-reduction controversy and Trump "musing" that the Pentagon might want to take disciplinary action against Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, I sad this about Attorney General William Barr:

I'd tried hard to see Barr as one of the few remaining principled figures in the Trump administration. I was mightily impressed with his speech at the Notre Dame Law School last October, in which he defended our society's Christian underpinnings against militant secularists. He was well-regarded around Washington. His confirmation hearing for his first stint as Attorney General in 1991 went smoothly, with both Democrats and Republicans speaking well of him.

But he seems to have come under the VSG's sway. Trump's been leaning on him just like he did Jeff Sessions. And now a precedent has been set. The independence of the Justice Department is always going to be in question.

But maybe not. He showed some noteworthy spine in this ABC News interview:

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Barr’s comments are a rare break with a president who the attorney general has aligned himself with and fiercely defended. But it also puts Barr in line with many of Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill who say they support the president but wish he’d cut back on his tweets.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.

When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”

Most folks wait until they've left the administration to talk like that.

I just don't think he's an out and out lapdog.

People love to come to immediate conclusions and then filter everything else that they encounter through that confirmation bias.

Another such conclusion is that the jury was tainted because the fore-lady, Tomeka Hart, a former school-board chair in Memphis, has been found to have strong objections to Trump.

Not so fast, says David French in his newsletter, which I get in my email. He sets the table by acknowledging that she does indeed have some pretty strong views:

One of the jurors, a woman named Tomeka Hart, wrote a Facebook post defending the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in protest after their superiors at the Department of Justice reversed their sentencing recommendation (more on that below).  The instant Hart outed herself, conservative journalists combed through her social media history and found that she’s not just a Democrat, she’s a former Democratic congressional candidate, a frequent donor to Democratic campaigns, and before the trial tweeted multiple times not just against Trump but also about the Mueller investigation.

But check out the exhaustive questioning Hart went through when she was being selected:

Neither the law nor the known facts support the claim. At least not yet. The law does not require judges to sideline potential jurors who have strong political beliefs. Democrats can sit in judgment on Republicans, and Republicans can sit in judgment on Democrats. The key question isn’t whether a person is partisan but rather whether they’re capable of setting aside political bias to decide questions of fact fairly and impartially. And, believe it or not, this happens all the time in the United States of America. It’s happened in my own cases. Moreover, the jury selection process (called voir dire) provides attorneys with a limited number of peremptory challenges—which permit attorneys to strike jurors without showing cause—and ample opportunity to challenge jurors for cause. In the Stone case, the trial court struck at least 40 jurors for cause (38 in response to the defense team’s initial requests and two more after a request for reconsideration).  The voir dire process is vitally important. If the prospective juror discloses all relevant material facts in response to questions from the judge and/or opposing counsel, and the judge is still satisfied that the juror can set aside any political bias to render a fair verdict, their decision will rarely be reversed. If, however, the juror is deceptive in voir dire, then the defendant may well be denied a fair trial. In a 1984 case called McDonough Power Equipment v. Greenwood, the Supreme Court succinctly explained the standard: We hold that to obtain a new trial in such a situation, a party must first demonstrate that a juror failed to answer honestly a material question on voir dire, and then further show that a correct response would have provided a valid basis for a challenge for cause. The motives for concealing information may vary, but only those reasons that affect a juror's impartiality can truly be said to affect the fairness of a trial. Did Hart truthfully answer every material question on voir dire? If so, then these “revelations” aren’t revelations at all, and the likelihood that they could form the foundation of a new trial are slim to none. Fortunately, there’s a transcript of the oral voir dire, and the transcript does not help Roger Stone.  Hart (identified only as Juror 1261, but identifiable by her statement that she ran for Congress and other biographical details) was questioned by the trial judge and by defense counsel. After first asking questions about Hart’s prior service on a grand jury, the judge asked a series of key questions: THE COURT: You've also indicated a fair amount of paying attention to news and social media including about political things? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: And when we asked what you read or heard about the defendant, you do understand that he was involved in Mr. Trump's campaign in some way? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: Is there anything about that that affects your ability to judge him fairly and impartially sitting here right now in this courtroom? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Absolutely not. THE COURT: What is it that you have read or heard about him? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: So nothing that I can recall specifically. I do watch sometimes paying attention but sometimes in the background CNN. So I recall just hearing about him being part of the campaign and some belief or reporting around interaction with the Russian probe and interaction with him and people in the country, but I don't have a whole lot of details. I don't pay that close attention or watch C-SPAN. THE COURT: Can you kind of wipe the slate clean and learn what you need to learn in this case from the evidence presented in the courtroom and no other source? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: You actually have had some interest in Congress yourself? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: Does the fact that this case involves allegations of not being truthful to Congress, is that something that you think that the nature of the allegations alone would make it hard for you to be fair? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. The prosecution declined to ask Hart any questions. Then, defense counsel had its turn: MR. BUSCHEL: Did you ever work for anyone in Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. MR. BUSCHEL: You've worked on campaigns for Congress people running for Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I ran for Congress. MR. BUSCHEL: You ran for Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I worked on my own campaign. MR. BUSCHEL: And you have friends who worked for other congressmen? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. MR. BUSCHEL: Do you have any political aspirations now? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I don't know, not federal. MR. BUSCHEL: What might they be? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: My home state in Tennessee. No local. MR. BUSCHEL: Just recognize that there might be some media— What are your aspirations? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I served, can I just say I served in political office in Memphis in a local office on the school board. So I, one day I wake up and say I run for, you know, office again in Memphis to impact education. One day I wake up and say no way in the world would I do that. So I don't have an immediate plan to run for office. MR. BUSCHEL: The fact that you run for an office, you're affiliated with a political party. Roger Stone is affiliated with the Republican party, Donald Trump. You understand what I'm saying and getting at? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I do. MR. BUSCHEL: How do you feel about that? MR. KRAVIS: Objection. THE COURT: Can you make that question a little bit more crisp? Is there anything about his affiliation with the Trump campaign and the Republican party in general that gives you any reason to pause or hesitate or think that you couldn't fairly evaluate the evidence against him? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. MR. BUSCHEL: Thank you, ma'am. THE COURT: All right, you can step out. R. BUSCHEL: Thank you, ma'am. THE COURT: All right, you can step out. (Prospective juror leaves courtroom.) THE COURT: Mr. Buschel, you have a motion? MR. BUSCHEL: No. THE COURT: Okay, let's bring in the next juror.

So it's a little early to shout "Bingo! She was biased!", which is what Trump basically did via Twitter, which is what has Barr irritated.

And so it goes in VSG world.