Bush also abided by post-Watergate norms and avoided taking any steps that could be seen as politicizing the Justice Department. “Watergate made Republican administrations very wary of the Justice Department,” Barr said in the 2001 interview. “And I think Republican administrations—including the Reagan administration, and certainly the Bush administration—took the view that the Attorney General–Justice Department was special and different, and you didn’t mess around with it, didn’t intervene, you didn’t interfere.”
