FILE – In this July 10, 2018, file photo, former President Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, right, arrives at federal courthouse in Washington, for status hearing. Prosecutors with the special counsel’s office say Flynn is not yet ready to be sentenced. The joint filing with defense lawyers Tuesday, Aug. 21, is a sign that Flynn’s cooperation with investigators is continuing.(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Attorney General William Barr has increasingly become a target of the left, culminating over the last two weeks when progressive presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called for his impeachment and the House Judiciary Committee called him to testify in March, ostensibly to discuss his “interference” in the sentencing of Trump associate Roger Stone.

But there’s surely another reason the left is ramping up their attempt to smear a man who, by all accounts, had been nearly universally respected prior to his involvement in ferreting out corruption in the previous administration’s dealings.

Barr is a huge part of why an independent review of the prosecution of Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has been opened. The other person responsible is Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, who the Washington Times describes as “an appeals court specialist and longtime Justice Department critic.”

Powell, who has recently been alerting the public to the atrocities in the Flynn case, sent Barr a letter in June requesting a new investigation due to what she called “prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of FBI investigators.

“We request the appointment of new government counsel with no connection to the Special Counsel team of attorneys or agents to conduct review of the entire Flynn case for Brady material that has not been produced and prosecutorial misconduct writ large,” Ms. Powell wrote to Mr. Barr.

…In her June letter to Mr. Barr, Ms. Powell recited her version of events. She said prosecutor Brandon Van Grack later acknowledged that the Flynn call was “perfectly legal.” It did not violate the Logan Act, which appeared to be the basis for the FBI visiting Flynn that day.

“There was no ‘Logan Act violation,’ and everyone knew it,” Ms. Powell wrote. “Yet General Flynn was illegally unmasked by the Obama administration and his call leaked to explode the ‘Russia collusion’ narrative in the press. The FBI interview was worse than ‘entrapment.’ He was led to believe he was having a casual conversation with friends about a training exercise from a day or two before, when in truth, it was a set-up-tantamount to a ‘frame, manipulated by Yates, Comey, Strzok, McCabe, and others to take General Flynn out of the administration. [Mueller team] then used it to pressure him to try to take out President Trump.”

… The Barr intervention came after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had rejected all of Ms. Powell’s arguments to date. She claimed that the Mueller team withheld exculpatory evidence and that the FBI maliciously edited 302 interview reports to hurt Flynn.

Flynn last month moved to rescind his December 2017 guilty plea of lying to Mr. Strzok and the other agent.

The New York Times reported Friday that Jeffrey Jensen, a former FBI agent who serves as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, was appointed by Barr and will be reviewing Flynn’s case.

In the meantime, the hyperbolic caterwauling and attempts to smear Barr will continue unabated until U.S. Attorney John Durham finally releases his report on the origins of the Russian collusion probe.