William Barr again asserts that documents indictment is all Trump’s fault: In another Sunday show appearance, the former attorney general laid into his former boss, Donald Trump.
Donald Trump Did Himself In
During most of his time as attorney general, William Barr was seen as a steadfast defender of the president he served, Donald Trump.
He was widely criticized, in fact, for his summary of the Mueller Report that left out most of the damning details.
That began to change once Trump began denying his 2020 election loss, with Barr resigning early and not staying on for the final weeks of the Trump presidency. Barr has been especially critical of Trump since the announcement that he had been indicted for his handling of classified documents, becoming a regular visitor to the Sunday talk shows.
Barr did it again on Sunday, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” as reported by the New York Times. This time, he ripped Trump’s “reckless conduct,” and called the federal indictment “entirely of his own making.”
“He’s like a defiant 9-year-old kid who is always pushing the glass towards the edge of the table, defying his parents from stopping him from doing it,” Barr said on CBS. The ex-attorney general also noted that “our country can’t be a therapy session for a troubled man like this.”
Barr has stated that he believes some past investigations of Trump have been “witch hunts,” but that that’s not the case with the documents indictment.
“This was a case entirely of his own making,” Barr said on the show. “He had no right to those documents. The government tried over a year, quietly and with respect, to get them back — which it was essential that they do — and he jerked them around. And he had no legal basis for keeping them.”
The former attorney general also said that he believes Trump will also be charged in relation to his efforts to overturn the election. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges in the documents case, is also investigating the elections case. Barr also said that he will be a witness in that January 6 case if he’s asked, but that he doesn’t expect to be.
Barr did state, however, that “I don’t like the idea of a former president serving time.”
Trump was indicted on 37 counts, mostly for violating the Espionage Act, after prosecutors say he refused to hand over classified documents, lied to his own attorneys, and obstructed efforts to get the documents back.
Much of the Republican Party has stood by Trump after the indictment, calling it a “witch hunt,” surfacing bogus legal theories that a former president is allowed to keep whatever records he wants, or “whatabouting” past cases involving Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and President Biden. None of those defenses is likely to have any salience in a court of law.
Others have railed against the FBI and Justice Department — certainly not known historically as tribunes of the political left — for bias and for being out to get Trump, with some even calling for the defunding of those agencies.
Trump has also raised millions of dollars since he was indicted, and he maintains a huge lead in the Republican nominating contest.
Somewhat bizarrely, as pointed out by Bloomberg News’ Joshua Green, some of Trump’s biggest defenders are those who are running against him for president.
“Even before Trump and his ever-changing legal team rolled up to a Miami courthouse to face 37 felony counts ranging from willful retention of national defense information to conspiracy to obstruct justice, the Republicans who stand to gain the most from his legal travails—the ones ostensibly running for president!—were among his most vocal defenders,” Green wrote of the former president’s GOP opponents.”
Chris Christie, another former Trump ally, has been a rare presidential candidate who has been critical of the former president, especially in relation to the documents case.
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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