In 1992 New York Times writer William Safire referred to Barr as the "Coverup-General Barr", accusing him of concealing George H. W. Bush's involvement in Iraqgate and the Iran–Contra affair. On December 11, 2019, former Attorney General Eric Holder, who had served under President Obama, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming William Barr is "unfit to be attorney general" for his "naked partisan[ship]", "attempts to vilify the president's critics", his attacks on the inspector general and his comments on ongoing investigations. In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". Webster asserted that "the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault," writing that "aspersions cast upon [FBI employees] by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme." Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Actions Barr took in the Roger Stone case led to an outcry from a bipartisan group of more than 2,000 former DOJ employees, who called on Barr to resign. Sixty-five law professors and faculty from George Washington University Law School, Barr's alma mater, wrote in a June 2020 letter that he had "failed to fulfill his oath of office to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States'". They wrote that Barr's actions as attorney general "have undermined the rule of law, breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the Department of Justice". During a June 2020 House Judiciary Committee testimony, Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general for whom Barr worked during the George H. W. Bush presidency, asserted that Barr "poses the greatest threat, in my lifetime, to our rule of law and to public trust in it". Three months later, Ayer claimed Barr "is on a mission to install the president as an autocrat". In January 2022, it is reported that the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack held conversations with Barr about the Trump administration's approach to compromise the integrity of the 2020 election, specifically about the potential coordination between the Justice Department and the Defense Department. Political positions A lifelong Republican, Barr takes an expansive view of executive powers and supports "law and order"