Former Atty. Gen Bill Barr told PBS Nov. 18 that former President Donald Trump should stand aside, having failed in his view to manage the presidency in his fout years in office. Barr said Trump doesn’t have what it takes for president, despite backing him while he served as his Attorney General. Barr makes only limited sense that there’s enough opposition to Trump in the Republican Party to create more widespread division, something the vast majority of voters don’t want. Barr had his falling out with Trump after the Nov. 3 presidential election when Trump lost to 80-year-old President Joe Biden. Barr said Trump went over the deep end with his claims that widespread voter fraud fixed the election for Biden. Barr said Trump lost any connection to reality, claiming that the election was fixed. Trump couldn’t get that voters were fed up with his leadership style.
Barr thinks with Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith yesterday, it’s more likely Trump will face indictments either of the classified docs stored at Mar-a-Lago or Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. “He didn’t do what the whole country hoped—that he would rise to the occasion and rise to the office, and he didn’t do that,” Barr said. Barr has joined the demonize Trump crowd, not looking at what happened during his 2016 campaign and presidency. For Trump four years in office, he was under FBI investigation for his alleged contacts with the Kremlin. Barr knows the egregious abuse of the U.S. justice system to prevent Trump from running and once president to get him removed from office, all based on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fake opposition research AKA the Steele dossier. Barrr knows Trump’s continuous harassment in office.
Before Barr left office Dec. 23, 2020, he appointed former U.S. Atty. John Durham (R-Conn.) to investigate the Russian hoax. Even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, taking 22-months and $40 million, cleared Trump of any wrongdoing March 23, 2019, Barr knew the Democrat mob led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Caliif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) relentlessly insisted Trump colluded with Russia. Barr’s appointment of Durham as Special Counsel was supposed to get to the bottom of the Democrat witch hunt that plagued Trump’s four years in office. So, Trump really never had the support needed for a president, while the Democrat Party and press pursued fake stories about Trump’s ties to Russia. “So he’s had his chance,” Barr said. “He obviously does not have the qualities necessary to unite the party, which is the first step on the road back and the he should stand aside.”
Barr once has great empathy for Trump mistreatment by the Justice Department and the press but somehow has joined the anti-Trump mob embodied in groups like the Lincoln Project, will to raise money to run attack ads against Trump. Barr thinks the Department of Justice probably has enough evidence against Trump to charge him with violating the Presidential Records Act, Espionage Act or National Archives Act. Whether Smith finds ground to charge Trump with crime or not, Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland must have the judgment to know whether that’s good for the country, to indict an former president. Barr agrees that whether the DOJ has enough evidence to charge Trump, that doesn’t mean that Garland would follow through. Clearly, Barr’s part of the never-Trump movement, working with Democrats and Republicans to find any way possible to stop him running in 2024.
No one knows better that Barr how the DOJ, FBI and NSA used the instruments of federal law enforcement and intel to stop Trump’s 2016 campaign. Once president, those same agencies worked with Democrat and the press to get rid of Trump. Barr was called Trump’s “lapdog” during his time a Attorney General. Once he broke with Trump, Barr has become the new media darling, sought after by Democrats and the press. Barr can talk all he wants about Trump not uniting the GOP but he can’t trash his accomplishments in office, leaving the U.S. economy strong without inflation and, most importantly, free of any news foreign wars. Biden didn’t long in office before to go to war against the Russian Federation, the first time in U.S. history. Trump had strong foreign relations with U.S. adversaries, Russia, China and North Korea. Biden has wrecked U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations.
Barr thinks that Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland has the technical grounds to charge Trump with violation any number of presidential records acts. But, as Barr admitted, whether that’s advisable or not to indict a former president on relatively minor infractions. Barr turned from loyal Trump supporter to stabbing his former boss in the back, showing the kind or revolting disloyalty, not befitting Barr’s stature as former Attorney General Whether Barr thinks Trump should “step aside” or not, that’s for GOP primary voters to decide. Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut.) want Trump to disappear but it’s no up to Barr or Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to decide that based on some petty charge. Any objective look at the U.S. under Trump compared with Biden, shows a stable economy and foreign policy free of costly foreign wars like the War in Ukraine.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
