Former Attorney General Bill Barr said the Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be "getting very close" to having enough evidence to indict former President Donald Trump.
“There are two questions: Will the government be able to make out a technical case, will they have evidence by which that they could indict somebody on, including him?” Barr, who has been at odds with Trump since leaving office, told Fox News on Wednesday.
“That’s the first question, and I think they’re getting very close to that point, frankly," he added. Barr did not elaborate on why he believes that, and he did not say whether he has any specific information that led him to such a conclusion.
The second question, Barr said, involves whether the DOJ would indict a former president. He said hoped that the agency's currently leadership won't indict Trump due to the turmoil it could create in the United States.
“At the end of the day, there’s another question which is, ‘Do you indict a former president? What will that do to the country, what kind of precedent will that set? Will the people really understand that this is not failing to return a library book, that this was serious?’ And so, you have to worry about those things,” Barr asked. “I hope that those kinds of factors will incline the administration not to indict him because I don’t want to see him indicted as a former president.”
It came after Barr, who was appointed by Trump and left office in late 2020, criticized U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, for granting the former president's request to have a special master review documents that were taken by FBI agents during the Aug. 8 raid targeting Mar-a-Lago.
“The dispute isn’t over whether this document is potentially executive privilege and this one isn’t. That’s not the dispute,” he said. “The dispute is whether the president, even if it is executive privilege, can the president bar DOJ from reviewing the documents? And the answer to that, I think, is clearly no … Totally wrong, totally wrong.”
The Epoch Times has contacted a Trump spokesperson for comment.
Trump and Barr have publicly been at odds after Barr claimed there was no widespread fraud during the 2020 election, running counter to what the former president and his team have said they want investigated. Barr departed the Trump administration in December of that year.
Last week, the 45th president called Barr a "RINO," or a "Republican in name only," for the former attorney general's recent comments about the FBI raid and DOJ investigation.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said Barr "was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats.”
“Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast—Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!” Trump added.
