No one can refute that one of the hardest working individuals in the Trump Administration is Attorney General Bill Barr.
Where Democrat governors and mayors across the nation have refused to do their jobs, Bill Barr has stepped in to protect law-abiding citizens.
Back in July, Barr launched Operation Legend with the goal of suppressing violent protesters in large cities around the country.
And so far, the operation has been a success!
Fox News reports on Barr’s press conference today where he gave an update on the program:
At least 217 people have been charged with a federal crime, and more than 1,000 arrests have been made in major metropolitan cities since the Department of Justice launched Operation Legend in July, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced on Wednesday.
Nearly 400 firearms have been seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Barr launched Operation Legend on July 8 as “a sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies work in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials to fight violent crime,” the DOJ said in a release.
It was named in honor of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed while he slept in the early morning of June 29 in Kansas City, Mo. Last week, a Jackson County prosecutor announced second-degree murder charges against his suspected killer, 22-year-old Ryson Ellis, who was being held in Tulsa County Jail.
“LeGend is a symbol of the many hundreds of innocent lives that have been taken in the recent upsurge of crime in many of our urban areas,” Barr said at a press conference in Kansas City. “His life mattered and the lives of all of those victims matter. His name should be remembered and his senseless death, like those of all the other innocent victims in this recent surge, should be unacceptable to all Americans.”
Barr said the federal government has dispatched to nine U.S. cities more than 1,000 additional agents from the FBI, ATF, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshals Service to work shoulder to shoulder with state and local partners on homicide and assault squads to crack cases.
The government has also allocated $78.5 million in grants to support additional police positions, hire more prosecutors and improve technology to solve firearms crimes.
“We saw one result of those efforts last week when Kansas City Police arrested the suspected murderer of LeGend,” Barr said. “This arrest will not bring LeGend back but it will make his case an example of how we can come together to take violent criminals off the street and to make our communities safer.”
Barr received an absolute outpouring of support on Twitter for the success of the program:
While you're at it, watch Barr's outstanding press conference right here:
And as if he weren't busy keeping the peace, Bloomberg reports Barr is also tracking US Attorney John Durham's investigation into the Obama Administration's spying on the Trump Campaign in 2016:
Attorney General William Barr is promising more revelations from a probe of the government’s investigation into Russian meddling in 2016, but he may be running out of time.
Barr said last week’s formal charge against a former FBI lawyer is just the first of several “significant” developments he expects to come out before the Nov. 3 presidential election.
But Barr’s critics say Justice Department policy states that he has until about Sept. 4 to make any information public. The attorney general disagrees, and President Donald Trump -- lagging in the polls -- has made clear he expects his top law enforcement officer to press on.
Long-standing Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors must not take investigative steps or issue criminal charges for the purpose of influencing an election or helping a particular candidate or party when the vote is less than two months away. Then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reveal his reopening of a probe into Hillary Clinton days before the 2016 election -- a move seen as aiding Trump -- violated that principle and was widely criticized.“Law enforcement should do its job but not be determining election results,” said Joshua Geltzer, who served in the Justice Department and on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “All of us are clear on what the spirit and actual intent is of the 60-day rule.”
Barr contends that the probe led by U.S. Attorney John Durham isn’t focused on either candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden or Trump, so the Justice Department deadline isn’t relevant. And he has rejected accusations that he’s trying to influence voting.
“I have said there are going to be developments, significant developments, before the election,” Barr said in an interview last week with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “But we’re not doing this on the election schedule. We’re aware of the election. We’re not going to do anything inappropriate before the election.”
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