Bill Barr says DOJ is “very close” to having the evidence to indict Trump after Mar-a-Lago raid: “This isn’t just a failure to return a library book.”
- Barr said the DOJ faces two questions – whether it has the evidence to impeach Trump and whether it should do so
- “I think they’re pretty close, honestly,” Barr said on Fox News of the DOJ, which has the evidence to support an indictment
- Barr said he hopes the DOJ will not indict Trump for avoiding stoking further tensions across the country
- “I also think there will be a lot of pressure to charge him because one question is, look, if someone else would have been charged, why not charge him?”
Former Attorney General Bill Barr predicted that the Justice Department was “very close” to having enough evidence to indict Donald Trump, although he said he hoped they would not take such action.
Barr said the DOJ faces two questions – whether it has the evidence to impeach Trump and whether it should do so.
“I think they’re pretty close, honestly,” Barr said on Fox News of the DOJ, which has the evidence to support an indictment.
He added: “I think at the end of the day there’s another question, and that’s whether you’re impeaching a former president? What will that do to the country? What precedent will this set – will people really understand that this doesn’t mean not returning a library book, that this was meant seriously?’
Barr said he hopes the DOJ will not indict Trump for avoiding stoking further tensions across the country.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr predicted that the Justice Department was “very close” to having enough evidence to indict Donald Trump, although he said he hoped they would not take such action
“I hope that those kinds of factors will lead the government not to impeach him because I don’t want him to be impeached as a former president. But I also think there’s going to be a lot of pressure to indict him because one question is, look, if someone else had been indicted, why not indict him?
Barr also said he disagreed with Trump-appointed Judge Eileen Cannon’s decision preventing the DOJ from seeing the documents and appointing a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, saying, he hopes the government will appeal the decision.
“The problem I have with the special director is what she did with the so-called executive privilege documents. And she didn’t address the only contentious question, which is: Can the former president say investigators aren’t even allowed to see the secret documents he was wrongfully kept in Mar-a-Lago? he said.
Barr said the DOJ faces two questions – whether it has the evidence to impeach Trump and whether it should do so
“She dodges it, and then she says she’s going to get a special foreman to see if it’s privileged or not. That’s not the argument,” Barr said. “I hope there will be an appeal.”
Barr also explained why personal documents such as Trump’s passports were taken, arguing that they were evidence of how classified documents were kept alongside personal documents.
“If you find very sensitive documents in Trump’s desk along with his passports, that ties Trump to those documents,” Barr said. “The fact that they were found with the classified documents is conclusive and the government will decide if it’s relevant.”
Barr has unleashed a barrage of criticism against his former boss since the Aug. 8 raid in which the FBI seized more than 11,000 government documents and photos.
In another Fox interview on Friday, the former attorney general said he doubts Trump’s claim that he declassified every document taken from Mar-a-Lago.
Barr has unleashed a barrage of criticism against his former boss since the Aug. 8 raid in which the FBI seized more than 11,000 government documents and photos
A view of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
But if Trump were actually ‘standing over dozens of boxes without really knowing what was in them and saying, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here’, that would be such abuse and it shows such recklessness that it’s almost worse, than to take the documents. ‘ Barr said.
Barr is a former ally-turned-critic, stepping down from the role in the final weeks of the Trump presidency when his boss claimed the 2020 election was stolen.
For the past few days, he has defended the Justice Department and the FBI for the Mar-a-Lago search on TV.
“The facts are beginning to show that they’ve been pushed around. So how long are they going to wait?” Barr told Fox News on Friday.
After that performance, Trump took to Truth Social to say that Barr “started off well as an AG but faded quickly.”
“He was a weak and pathetic RINO who was so afraid of impeachment that he became a prisoner of the radical left Democrats,” Trump continued.
