Bill Barr slams Donald Trump for “jerking around” the US government over classified documents
It may have not been the assessment the Fox News presenters were expecting, but the former Trump employee had little doubt over culpability.
On Friday we listened to an interview on Fox News of the former US attorney general, Bill Barr, and he left us in no uncertain terms where he feels the blame lies on the case against Donald Trump of removing documents that belonged to the US government.
What Barr said about Trump raid
Justin Baragona from the Daily Beast did a great job of summarising the interview for the masses, many of his Twitter followers very likely avoiding the right-leaning news channel. And via a selection of video clips you get the two sides of the interview: firstly, a man who knows how these things work explaining the wrongdoing and likely strong evidence now with the Department of Justice, and secondly, the surprise of the presenters at just how blunt he was.
“Well, I think the whole idea of a special master is a bit of a red herring... at this stage, since they have already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time,” Barr responded to the opening question. He then went on to clarify what he meant by this.
Such recklessness, it’s almost worse than taking the documents.
Fox News anchor John Roberts then asked, “Is there any legitimate reason for those materials to be in the former president’s possession?” To which Barr was candid. “No. I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they should have been,” he rebuffed.
“If in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them and said I hereby declassify everything in here, that would be such an abuse,” Barr continued. “...and that shows such recklessness it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
When asked whether the FBI could have taken a more measured approach, and not raiding Trump’s property while he was gone, the answer was also pretty damning.
“I think the driver on this from the beginning was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago,” Barr said. “People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, ok!”
Barr continued to add to the wrong doing, explaining that the government had already waited a long time to get these documents back, gone through the appropriate channels, and that “the facts are starting to show they were being jerked around.”
Let’s see if the former president has anything to say about the interview.