(The Hill) — Former President Trump lashed out at his former Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday, calling him “weak” and “ineffective” and accusing Barr of failing to do more to advance Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“Former Attorney General Bill Barr wouldn’t know voter fraud if it was staring him in the face — and it was,” Trump said in a statement. “The fact is, he was weak, ineffective, and totally scared of being impeached, which the Democrats were constantly threatening to do. They ‘broke’ him.”
Trump also accused Barr of refusing to act on Trump’s allegations of election fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election out of a desire to “save his own hide.”
Trump’s comments came after Barr told NBC News in an interview that the former president had become enraged when he told him that there was no evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. Barr’s opinion has been backed up by officials from both parties nationally and in key swing states.
“I told him that all this stuff was bull—- … about election fraud. And, you know, it was wrong to be shoveling it out the way his team was,” Barr said, recounting how Trump became “very angry” about the remarks.
Barr said that he offered to resign from his post and that Trump accepted that offer. The former attorney general’s account is at odds with Trump’s claim that he was the one who asked for Barr’s resignation. Barr announced his departure from the AG role in mid-December 2020 and left the job Dec. 23 of that year.
More than 13 months after leaving the White House, Trump has continued to spread the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he was the rightful winner of the presidential race.
He has also repeatedly defended many of his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, accusing Democrats and so-called “RINOs” — Republicans in name only — of targeting those individuals for political gain.
The House select committee responsible for investigating the Jan. 6 riot said in a court filing this week that it had uncovered evidence showing that Trump and his campaign tried to illegally obstruct Congress’ certification of electoral votes and “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
