Attorney general Bill Barr gets an ethics complaint for Valentine’s Day

US attorney general Bill Barr isn’t getting much love of late.

Today, he became the subject of a complaint to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is requesting an investigation into Barr’s alleged violations of Justice Department (DOJ) rules and ethical conduct standards for executive branch employees.

At the heart of the complaint are Barr’s public comments about an ongoing inquiry—namely, the DOJ’s probe into the origins of the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election (aka “investigate the investigators”). His allegedly prejudicial “inflammatory and disparaging” statements on matters related to an active probe taint the inquiry’s integrity and public sentiment and appear to violate government rules and codes of conduct, CREW argues.

But that is not the sole problem, it adds, and there’s evidence to support that sentiment, this week especially.

Barr came under fire Tuesday after career prosecutors withdrew from the Roger Stone case, following president Donald Trump’s tweets disparaging their sentencing recommendations. The proposed punishment for Trump’s associate was within statutory guidelines, yet the DOJ subsequently filed a new sentencing memo with a reduced recommended sentence, claiming the action was unrelated to the president’s sentiments (meanwhile, an emboldened Trump suggested that the prosecutors doing their jobs had gone “rogue”).

Lawyers were furious. “Bill Barr’s DOJ is plainly nothing more than a satellite office of the White House,” said Glenn Kirschner, an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst who worked as a federal prosecutor for 30 years. “Trump tweets his outrage and Barr reacts like a lapdog.”

Barr attempted to redeem himself yesterday, telling ABC News that it was “impossible” to do his job with the president’s continual public commentary undermining his legal authority. Barr insisted that he must do what he thinks is right, regardless of the president’s desires.

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