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Trump Says William Barr to Step Down as Attorney General by Christmas
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December 14, 2020
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1:10Now PlayingAttorney General William Barr is stepping down two weeks after saying in an interview that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 election, the culmination of an increasingly sour relationship with President Donald Trump.
Barr “has done an outstanding job,” Trump said in a tweet on Monday, saying the attorney general will step down on Dec. 23. He’ll be succeeded by Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, Trump added.
Barr’s departure followed a Dec. 1 interview with the Associated Press in which the attorney general said the Justice Department hadn’t seen “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Those comments poured cold water on Trump’s continued claims that President-elect Joe Biden stole the Nov. 3 election through voter fraud and manipulation across a handful of swing states -- allegations that haven’t been substantiated. Barr, 70, had ordered U.S. attorneys across the country to find out if there was significant voting fraud following the claims by Trump and allies such as Rudy Giuliani.
One day after Barr’s AP interview, Trump posted a 46-minute taped speech in which he repeated unfounded claims that Democrats had somehow fraudulently engineered his defeat. The speech repeated claims that have been rejected in court, as well as more outlandish conspiracies that his lawyers have not presented to judges.
Then on Dec. 3, the president balked at voicing support for his attorney general.
“Ask me that in a number of weeks from now,” Trump said in response to a question about whether he retained confidence in Barr. “They should be looking at all of this fraud.”
Barr was nominated after Trump fired Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, on the day after the 2018 midterm elections. When Barr took office in February 2019, it was his second stint as the nation’s top law enforcement officer after holding the post decades earlier, toward the end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency.
This time, Barr’s tenure was turbulent and controversial. Moving aggressively, he sought to restore the department’s reputation as strong on law-and-order issues and to pursue his longtime belief that the Constitution justifies a dominant role for the executive branch.
But he was criticized for bending to Trump’s political demands, including becoming personally involved in criminal cases against some of the president’s allies, to the point that some career prosecutors resigned in protest.
In the weeks before the election, Trump increasingly demanded that Barr bring criminal charges against Biden. Trump alleged without evidence that Biden and his son, Hunter, participated in illegal business dealings, especially in China.
Trump criticized Barr in an interview Saturday with Fox News, saying the attorney general should have disclosed a tax investigation into Hunter Biden before the election.
Trump and his allies also wanted Barr to reveal information from an investigation into whether FBI or intelligence officials committed any wrongdoing in the early stages of their probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether anyone associated with Trump conspired in the operation. Barr even echoed Trump’s claim that his campaign had been the victim of “spying.”
But weeks before the election, Barr signaled that the FBI-Russia probe, led by by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, wouldn’t release preliminary findings ahead of the vote.
“To be honest, Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he’s going to down as a very sad situation,” Trump said in an interview in October on Fox Business Network.
Yet in what many Republicans will see as a parting gift, Barr said he named Durham to serve as special counsel in the continuing FBI-Russia probe, meaning his work will likely continue into the Biden administration. Democrats called the move an abuse of power.
Barr’s falling out with Trump came after he had been one of the most ardent and aggressive supporters of the president and his policies.
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