Former Attorney General William Barr suggested the Justice Department is “very close” to having the evidence to indict former President Donald Trump.
Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general from February 2019 until December 2020, has emerged as a critic of the former president and has criticized Trump for keeping allegedly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“There are two questions: Will the government be able to make out a technical case, will they have evidence, by which, that they could indict somebody on, including him?” Barr said during an America’s Newsroom interview on Fox News on Wednesday. “That’s the first question, and I think they’re getting very close to that point, frankly.”
TRUMP TEAM LASHES OUT AT DOJ LEAKS
The search warrant application cover sheet, unsealed in late August, provided more details on what the Justice Department was looking for. The records show Trump was being investigated under part of the Espionage Act related to “willful retention of national defense information.” The record also pointed to the “concealment or removal” of government records, as well as the “obstruction” of federal investigation.
Whether or not the Justice Department is considering charging Trump under those or other statutes is not known.
“I think at the end of the day, there’s another question, do you indict a former president?” Barr said Wednesday. “What will that do to the country? What kind of precedent will that set? Will the people really understand that this is not failing to return a library book, that this was serious?”
The former attorney general said: “You have to worry about those things, and I hope that those kinds of factors will incline the administration not to indict him because I don’t want to see him indicted as a former president.” But Barr added that prosecutors “will be under a lot of pressure to indict him, because — one question is, look, if anyone else would have gotten indicted, why not indict him?”
Barr had also said on The Story with Martha MacCallum on Fox News on Tuesday that “the government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether charges are appropriate — which is government documents were taken.” He added, “Classified information was taken and not handled appropriately. And they are looking into it, and there is some evidence to suggest that they were deceived.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief speech on Aug. 11, just three days after the raid, in which he said he personally signed off on the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing,” Garland said. “All Americans are entitled to the evenhanded application of the law, to due process of the law, and to the presumption of innocence.”
Garland also contended that “I have made clear that the Department of Justice will speak through its court filings and its work.”
Trump had thrashed Barr on his Truth Social account last week.
“Bill Barr had ‘no guts,’ and got ‘no glory.’ He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats – ‘Please, please, please don’t impeach me,’ he supposedly said,” Trump wrote. “Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!”
The former attorney general was asked about that on Tuesday.
“A RINO for him is anyone who disagrees with him that the election was stolen, right?” Barr said while chuckling. “That’s a RINO. Now, you know, as someone who handed out Barry Goldwater literature when I was 14 years old on the Upper West Side, it’s a little silly.”
