Barr Trashes Trump, Says GOP Needs To Move On
Former Attorney General William Barr says that Donald Trump is unfit for office, and that the GOP should move on from the former President (the same president who criticized German reliance on Russian energy while a sanctioned Putin didn't lift a finger against Ukraine for four years, but we digress).
According to a new book, Barr says, Trump has "shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed," and that Republicans should instead focus on rising leaders in the party (DeSantis?) who share Trump's agenda but not his "erratic personal behavior."
As the Wall Street Journal notes;
The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”
"The election was not ‘stolen," writes Barr, who says "Trump lost it."
Barr's barbs are unsurprising given the acrimonious relationship between he and Trump - who just last year called his former AG a "disappointment in every sense of the word."
Barr returned to his Bush-era role as head the DOJ in February 2019 after Trump fired former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), where critics say he sheltered the former president during the DOJ's investigations into Russian interference by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Prior to the Mueller report, Barr issued his own summary which essentially chalked it up to a nothingburger - enraging Democrats. Barr also presided over the decision to drop the federal case against Trump's former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn - a move Barr maintains was done to correct what he saw as prosecutorial overreach.
"Predictably our motion to dismiss the charges led to an election-year media onslaught, flogging the old theme that I was doing this as a favor to Trump," writes Barr. "But I concluded the handling of the Flynn matter by the FBI had been an abuse of power that no responsible AG could let stand."
Barr also details a Dec. 1, 2020 meeting in the Oval Office in which he says Trump became enraged after he said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could reverse Joe Biden's victory, contradicting Trump's claims.
"This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me," Trump reportedly shouted, before saying "He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’"
Barr says he reminded Trump that he sacrificed a certain level of personal credibility to "help you when I thought you were being wronged," but that the DOJ (which spent several years plotting against or investigating Trump) simply couldn't find evidence of election fraud.
Trump also slammed Barr for appointing a 'slow' federal prosecutor to look into the origins of the Russia probe, and for not firing former FBI Director James Comey after he was rebuked by the Inspector General's office for leaking memos to the press.
The former AG says that after the election, Trump "lost his grip" and that his constant claims of voter fraud underpinned the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
"The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill," wrote Barr.
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