William Barr, an attorney general for former President Donald Trump, undermined his former boss in a Fox News broadcast.
“The facts are starting to show that they were being jerked around, so how long do they wait?” asked Barr Friday on air.
Trump’s attorney general added he did not believe Trump’s claim he had declassified everything before transporting documents from the Oval Office to Mar-a-Lago. Barr contradicted critics of the FBI’s 10-hour search of Trump’s Florida home. Barr declared it was unprecedented for such sensitive materials to be taken to a country club.
The Daily Mail further reported:
Barr made his comments as Trump supporters continue to accuse the FBI and Department of Justice of conducted a witch hunt.
But on Friday, a court filing revealed the extent of the materials recovered from Trump’s Florida home: 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked secret, 31 marked as confidential, and 11,179 government documents or photographs that had no classification markings.
Barr defended the Department of Justice actions and expressed disbelief at Trump’s defense that he had declassified the materials.
‘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,’ he told Fox News.
‘And that shows such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.’
Barr was appointed attorney general by Trump in February 2019 but resigned in December of the following year, when the president launched a campaign to overturn the election result.
In testimony to the House January 6 committee, he said Trump had become ‘detached from reality.’
In the new interview he also pushed back on criticism of the Department of Justice and FBI for investigating Trump’s handing of government documents.
‘I think the driver on this from the beginning was was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago,’ he said, as he defended the search of a former president’s home.
‘People say this was unprecedented.
‘Well, it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put it in a country club.’
The unprecedented storage location stems from no previous president owned their own country club and resided there. By owning his own country club, Trump did not have to resort to pardoning a billionaire accused of trading with Iran when they held hundreds of American embassy workers hostage.
Bill Clinton’s last minute pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich followed a $450,000 donation to the Clinton library and $10,000 for Clinton’s legal defense costs.
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