William Barr facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids William Barr
Official portrait, 2019

77th and 85th United States Attorney General
In office February 14, 2019 – December 23, 2020
President	Donald Trump
Deputy	Rod Rosenstein Ed O'Callaghan (acting) Jeffrey A. Rosen
Preceded by	Jeff Sessions
Succeeded by	Merrick Garland
In office November 26, 1991 – January 20, 1993 Acting: August 16, 1991 – November 26, 1991
President	George H. W. Bush
Deputy	George J. Terwilliger III
Preceded by	Dick Thornburgh
Succeeded by	Janet Reno
25th United States Deputy Attorney General
In office May 26, 1990 – November 26, 1991
President	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Donald B. Ayer
Succeeded by	George J. Terwilliger III
United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel
In office January 20, 1989 – May 26, 1990
President	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Douglas Kmiec
Succeeded by	J. Michael Luttig

Personal details
Born	William Pelham Barr (1950-05-23) May 23, 1950 (age 74) New York City, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Christine Moynihan (m. 1973)
Children	3
Parents	Donald Barr Mary Margaret Ahern
Relatives	Stephen Barr (brother)
Education	Columbia University (BA, MA) George Washington University (JD)
Signature

William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as the United States attorney general in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and again in the administration of President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020.

Early life and education
Career
Political positions
Personal life
Honors
Images for kids
See also

Early life and education

Barr was born in New York City in 1950. His father, Donald Barr, taught English literature at Columbia University before becoming headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan and later the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, both members of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Barr's mother, Mary Margaret (née Ahern), also taught at Columbia. Barr's father was Jewish and raised in Judaism but later converted to Christianity and joined the Catholic Church. His mother is of Irish ancestry. Barr was raised as a Catholic. Barr was the second of four sons, and his younger brother Stephen Barr is a professor of physics at the University of Delaware.

Barr grew up on New York City's Upper West Side. As a child, he attended a Catholic grammar school, Corpus Christi School, and then the non-sectarian Horace Mann School. After high school, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in government and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1971. Barr was also an active member in the Sigma Nu fraternity. He did two additional years of graduate study at Columbia, receiving a Master of Arts in government and Chinese studies in 1973. While at Columbia, Barr opposed anti-Vietnam War occupation protests by students on campus.

After moving to Washington, D.C., to work as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Barr entered the evening student program at George Washington University Law School. He graduated in 1977 with a Juris Doctor with highest honors.

Career

From 1971 to 1977, Barr was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. He then served as a law clerk to judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In the 1980s, Barr worked for the law firm Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge, with one year's work in the White House of the Ronald Reagan administration dealing with legal policies. Before becoming attorney general in 1991, Barr held numerous other posts within the Department of Justice, including leading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and serving as deputy attorney general. From 1994 to 2008, Barr did corporate legal work for GTE and its successor company Verizon Communications, which made him a multimillionaire. From 2009 to 2018, Barr served on the board of directors for Time Warner.

Barr is a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of nearly unfettered presidential authority over the executive branch of the U.S. government. In 1989, Barr, as the head of the OLC, justified the U.S. invasion of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega. As deputy attorney general, Barr authorized an FBI operation in 1991 which freed hostages at the Talladega federal prison. An influential advocate for tougher criminal justice policies, Barr as attorney general in 1992 authored the report The Case for More Incarceration, where he argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate. Under Barr's advice, President George H. W. Bush in 1992 pardoned six officials involved in the Iran–Contra affair.

Barr became attorney general for the second time in 2019. During his term, he received criticism from many for his handling of several challenges, including his letter on the Mueller report, interventions in the convictions and sentences of former advisors to President Trump, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, his order of the federal government to resume federal executions after 17 years, and allegations of political interference in the removal of Geoffrey Berman from his Southern District of New York attorney position in a matter pertaining to the indictment of Turkish bank Halkbank, a bank with close personal ties to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On December 1, 2020, Barr stated FBI and Justice Department investigations found no evidence of irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election. Barr is the second person to ever serve two non-consecutive terms as U.S. Attorney General, after John J. Crittenden.

In 2022, it was reported that Barr would launch a law and consulting firm with former Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot.

Political positions

Barr with Senator Mitt Romney in February 2019

A lifelong Republican, Barr takes an expansive view of executive powers and supports "law and order" policies. Considered an establishment Republican at the time of his confirmation, Barr gained a reputation as someone loyal to Trump and his policies during his second tenure as attorney general. His efforts to support the sitting president politically during his DOJ office tenure have been viewed as the most strenuous since those of another law-and-order Attorney General, John N. Mitchell.

Immigration

As Deputy Attorney General, Barr – together with others at the Department of Justice – successfully led the effort for the withdrawal of a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would have allowed people with HIV/AIDS into the United States. He also advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected individuals from claiming asylum in the United States. According to Vox in December 2018, Barr supported an aggressive "law and order" agenda on immigration as attorney general in the Bush Administration.

2016 election

Barr donated $55,000 to a political action committee that backed Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and $2,700 to Donald Trump during the general election campaign.

Executive powers

Barr is a proponent of the unitary executive theory, which holds that the President has broad executive powers. Prior to joining the Trump administration, he argued that the president has "complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding".

Race relations

In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, Barr said he rejected the view "that the law enforcement system is systemically racist". In a CNN news interview in September 2020, Barr denied that systemic racism plays a role in police shootings of unarmed African American men and called such shootings by white police officers "very rare". Derek Chauvin, the officer who murdered Floyd, was willing to agree to third-degree murder and serve more than ten years in prison. Barr rejected a plea deal.

In September 2020, Barr suggested bringing Sedition charges against disruptive looters and rioters, a legal tool that is rarely used by the United States government. Sedition charges are normally reserved for those who "conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States", according to (18 U.S.C. § 2384). Such suggestions have brought fears that Barr is politicizing the U.S. Justice Department and, if enacted, would mean that the Justice Department could prosecute individuals based on political speech.

China

In July 2020, Barr condemned large American tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple, and Hollywood studios, accusing them of "kowtowing" to the Chinese Communist Party for the sake of profits. He said that "Hollywood now regularly censors its own movies to appease the Chinese Communist Party, the world's most powerful violator of human rights."

Personal life

Barr has been married to Christine Moynihan Barr since 1973. She holds a master's degree in library science, and together they have three daughters: Mary Barr Daly, Patricia Barr Straughn, and Margaret (Meg) Barr. Their eldest daughter, Mary, born 1977/1978, was a senior Justice Department official; Patricia, born 1981/1982, was counsel for the House Agriculture Committee; and Meg, born 1984/1985, is a former Washington prosecutor and cancer survivor (of recurrent Hodgkin's lymphoma), was counsel for Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana.

In February 2019, as their father awaited Senate confirmation for his appointment as attorney general, Mary left her post at the Department of Justice and took a position at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury Department's financial crimes unit. Her husband, however, continued to work in the Justice Department's National Security Division. Around the same time Mary left the Department of Justice, Tyler McGaughey, the husband of her youngest sister, left the U.S. Attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, to join the White House Counsel's office.

Barr is a Roman Catholic and is a member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. Barr served from 2014 to 2017 on the board of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) of the Archdiocese of Washington, an Opus Dei center and nexus of politically connected Catholics on K Street. Opus Dei has denied that Barr is a member.

Barr is an avid bagpiper. He began playing at age eight and has performed competitively in Scotland with a major American pipe band. At one time, Barr was a member of the City of Washington Pipe Band. During a US Attorneys’ National Conference on June 26, 2019, Barr surprised attendees by standing up in the middle of an NYPD Emerald Society performance, and joined them in playing Scotland the Brave with a bagpipe.

Barr is the brother of Stephen Barr, a physics professor at the University of Delaware.

Barr and Robert Mueller have known each other since the 1980s and are said to be good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.

Honors

In 1992, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by George Washington University.

Images for kids

Barr with President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office in 1983
Barr and Dan Quayle watch as President George H. W. Bush signs the Civil Rights Commission Reauthorization Act in the Rose Garden of the White House in 1991
Official photo of Barr during his first tenure as Attorney General
Barr is sworn in as Attorney General by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2019