Former Attorney General Bill Barr explained in an interview with PBS this past week that he thinks that the officials from the Department of Justice (DOJ) actually have a legitimate and fairly strong case in regard to former President Donald Trump.
Barr issued these statements as part of an interview with host Margaret Hoover for “Firing Line.”
Barr stated at the start of the interview that he does not think that Trump is “the right person to lead either the Republican Party or the country forward” and that he was overtly disappointed that Trump chose to announce that he would be once again pushing for the White House.
Barr stated that one of the main reasons that Trump was choosing to once again run was to try and hide from a series of unprecedented federal, state, and congressional investigations. “But I think he, you know, he has a monumental ego, and he doesn’t want to go down in history as a loser,” he went on. “And he also would like to get revenge on the people that he feels didn’t give him his due.”
When speaking about the recent poor showing from the candidates that Trump endorsed across key races from the recent midterm election, Barr stated that Trump “picked candidates that were weak candidates simply because they were willing to show their fealty to him by saying that the election was stolen. And that backfired completely.”
When speaking about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago that took place earleir this year under the guise of their criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of U.S. government records, Barr stated, “If the Department of Justice can show that these were indeed very sensitive documents, which I think they probably were, and also show that the president consciously was involved in misleading the Department, deceiving the government, and playing games after he had received the subpoena for the documents, those are serious charges.”
When questioned about if what Trump did was a “serious enough crime” to go after him, Barr stated, “That’s serious. ”
“Well, I’ve said that I personally think that they probably have the basis for legitimately indicting the president. I don’t know, I’m speculating,” he went on. “But given what’s gone on, I think they probably have the evidence that would check the box. They have the case.”
Barr continued to state that the argument for slamming Trump with crimes is that “if you let someone like this who, you know — if the facts are as raw as they may be, and you let someone get away with it, how can you protect these secrets?”
“How can you insist on people in government taking this stuff seriously?” he went on. “So, you know, that’s an important thing to weigh, as well as what the, you know, what it will do to the country and to the office of the presidency. And I think Merrick Garland is going to have to make that call.”
In light of these legal troubles, Barr claimed that he was still open to backing Trump once again at some point should he end up being the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 2024.
“I’m just hoping that never comes to that, because I think it would be a tragedy if he’s our nominee, if he’s the Republican nominee,” he stated. “I’ll have to see what’s going on in the world, who the Democratic nominee is. If it’s a progressive Democratic nominee, I can’t imagine voting for them.”
