OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
According to Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr has admitted that people were spying on his campaign and that there had been election fraud in the 2020 election and he did nothing about it.
On Monday evening, Fox News host Bret Baier asked Barr: ‘The president’s campaign was spied on. And is that a crime?’
‘Well, it depends on the motivations of the FBI people involved, and that’s obviously one of the things Durham’s will look at,’ Barr said. He did not dispute, however, that there was spying on Trump during his presidential campaign.
Durham was appointed by Barr to investigate the inception of the investigation into Russian collusion with Trump’s campaign. This has led to allegations that Hillary Clinton’s camp spied on him in 2016.
Monday evening, Trump issued the following statement: ‘Bill Barr said, and just reiterated, that the Trump campaign was ‘spied on’, but did nothing about it. Mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,’ and then did nothing to catch the fraudsters.’
‘He was so afraid of being impeached, that he went to the other side—and they left him alone. Barr was a ‘Bushie’ who never had the energy or competence to do the job that he was put in place to do.’
Barr responded that Trump ‘throws a tantrum and attacks the person personally.’
From February 2019 until December 23, 2020, the former Attorney General led Trump’s Justice Department, leaving one month before Trump left office and nearly two months after Biden won the presidential election.
Barr is making the rounds on television to promote his upcoming book One Damn Thing After Another. As a result, he continued to call into question his old boss’ 2020 election fraud claims.
‘The former president says that you did not look into many of the corrupt things that happened. You were a big disappointment. You were afraid to act and usually didn’t,’ Barr replied to Baier on Monday.
He replied: ‘I instructed the U.S. attorneys to pursue any specific and credible allegations of substantial fraud that could have affected the outcome in a state or in the election. And they did.’
‘It was a little bit like playing whack a mole because one day it was this, and then when that was blown up the next day, it was something else.’
‘And we just found all of them had no merit at all. And still, they’re being repeated today,’ he complained to Fox News.
In his first live television interview since leaving the Trump administration, Barr joined NBC Today on Monday morning.
In his opinion, there was no evidence that the last presidential race was ‘stolen’ from Trump – though he did leave the option of voting for him again in 2024 if he was to run again.
In March, Barr will publish his White House memoir. The ex-attorney general made clear and direct mention of Trump in the excerpts leading up to its release, claiming he went off the rails after the 2020 election and pointing the finger at him for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Savannah Guthrie of Today asked Barr: ‘Once and for all, did the president lose the election or was it stolen or rigged by massive fraud?’
‘Stolen and rigged are two different things, but there was no stealing of the election through fraud. Which means, you know, that people who were not qualified to vote or didn’t exist, their votes were counted, or good votes were subtracted. The votes reflected the decision of the people,’ Barr remarked.
‘There simply was no evidence of that.’
Barr said that ‘evidence’ Trump’s attorneys pushed immediately after Biden’s victory was ‘nonsense’ and ‘just false,’ pointing out that ‘no evidence has come out since then.’
‘You look at the vote, the actual vote, and there’s no mystery as to why he lost. He lost for the reason he was told for a whole year he was going to lose. Which is, he alienated Independent and Republican voters in the suburbs. That’s why he lost.’
During the run-up to the Capitol riot, Barr admitted he underestimated Trump, claiming his ‘aim was to pressure Congress and to pressure the vice president.’
‘Regardless of whether laws were broken, regardless of that, it was a shameful thing, because one branch of government shouldn’t be trying to use a mob to pressure another branch.’
Even so, he refused to rule out voting for him in 2024 should Trump run for re-election, claiming Democrats represented a greater threat.
‘I’ve certainly made it clear, I don’t think he should be our nominee, and I’m going to support somebody else for the nominee.’
‘Because I believe the greatest threat for the country is the progressive agenda pushed by the Democratic Party, it is inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.’
Guthrie pressed him, ‘So, even if he lied about the election and threatened democracy, as you write in your book, better than a Democrat?’
‘It’s hard to project what the facts are going to turn out to be three years hence. But as of now, it’s hard to conceive I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.’
Guthrie confronted Barr in the interview about the diverging concerns he has about Trump. After the 2020 election, Barr writes that Trump took a ‘dangerous turn’. While he was on the way out, his resignation letter highlighted Trump’s ‘historic’ accomplishments, though.
Source: The Republic Brief