Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- Donald Trump picked William Barr as his second attorney general largely because Barr had criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Barr still agrees with Trump that the Russia probe was a “witch hunt.”
The former attorney general takes a strikingly different view of the federal indictment against Trump that was unsealed this month, which Barr calls “very, very damning.” In contrast with many other prominent Republicans, Barr says the outrage is not the indictment but the “reckless conduct” that prompted it.
Like Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, his retention of government records after he left the White House presents Republicans with a choice. They can risk the wrath of Trump’s supporters by acknowledging reality, or they can play it safe by embracing his delusions.
Barr has rejected the latter course since Dec. 1, 2020, when he said the Justice Department had not seen “anything to substantiate” Trump’s story of systematically corrupted voting machines or any other evidence of “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” Around that time, Barr later recalled, he repeatedly told Trump such claims were “bull—-.”
Barr likewise has little patience for Trump’s assertion that he had “the absolute right to do whatever I want” with the thousands of presidential records he took when he left office, which included more than 300 marked as classified. “He had no right to those documents,” Barr said on “Face the Nation” this week. “He had no legal basis for keeping them.”
Many Republican legislators have portrayed the criminal charges related to Trump’s handling of those records as a politically motivated attack on Joe Biden’s likely 2024 opponent. But as Barr noted, Trump “provoked this whole problem himself” by refusing to return the documents.
“The government tried for over a year, quietly and with respect, to get them back, which was essential that they do, and he jerked them around,” Barr said. Trump remained recalcitrant even when he faced a federal subpoena seeking all the documents with classification markings stored at Mar-a-Lago.
“He didn’t raise any legal arguments,” Barr noted. Instead, according to the indictment, “he engaged in a course of deceitful conduct” aimed at hiding records covered by the subpoena. “If those allegations are true,” Barr said, Trump’s conduct was “outrageous” and “a clear crime.”
Barr called the evidence supporting the charges against Trump, which include obstruction of justice and willful retention of national defense information, “very strong,” noting that much of it “comes from his own lawyers.” Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran’s notes, for example, indicate that his client was inclined to defy the subpoena.
Consistent with that impression, Trump had boxes moved out of a Mar-a-Lago storage room before Corcoran could search them for relevant documents. Barr said he also believes Trump lied to the Justice Department by averring that he had fully complied with the subpoena — another crime listed in the indictment.
Trump has claimed every document he removed was “automatically declassified” — perhaps by a “standing order,” perhaps just “by thinking about it,” perhaps by the very act of removal. As Barr has previously noted, such claims are “highly improbable” and suggest a cavalier attitude toward national security. In any case, they are irrelevant under the statute dealing with national defense information, a category that can include unclassified material.
Trump also has argued that the Presidential Records Act gave him complete discretion to claim documents as his personal property. That legal theory is “absurd,” Barr noted, because “the whole purpose of the statute” is to “stop presidents from taking official documents out of the White House.”
Trump, whom Barr likened to “a defiant 9-year-old kid,” bridled at the legal restrictions on his acquisitive impulses, insisting that no one had any business going through “my boxes.” Barr is clearly correct when he observes that the case against Trump is “entirely of his own making.”
About Jacob Sullum
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum. During two decades in journalism, he has relentlessly skewered authoritarians of the left and the right, making the case for shrinking the realm of politics and expanding the realm of individual choice. Jacobs’ work appears here at AmmoLand News through a license with Creators Syndicate.
Barr is a Rino hack. He ignores the precedents that allow the President absolute right to determine what are HIS records and what aren’t. The gubmint can ask, but, can’t coerce or claim jurisdiction. When Trump removed those records they became his. The Supremes already settled that for Clinton. Just ask Judicial Watch, who lost a case attempting to access Clinton records. I would also point out the mishandling of an enormous volume of records by O’Bama, with his presidential library, and the now obvious mishandling by Biden who didn’t have the authority a president has. Then there is Hitlery… Read more »
Other than both of them being anti-2A, I fail to see why this is an Ammoland article.
I FORCED myself to listen to the Barr’s RAMBLINGS against the President he was hired under. ‘william bill barr’ MUST BE DISBARRED for REFUSING to HONOR his SWORN OATH-OF-OFFICE! THEN ‘barr’ MUST be CHARGED with FAILURE to fulfill his Fiduciary Duty as an official in the Do(in)J! I hold ‘bill barr’ PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for all of the E.O.s Buydem signed when he began his ILLEGAL term as pRESIDENT of the white-house.
Trump hired barr in part because he knew barr would be down with red flag laws and executive gun control. How could he not. Barr was famously the ag overseeing ruby ridge and then spent his own money and 10 years of his spare time defending fbi snipers that killed innocent americans that were victims of federal entrapment. The fact that trump even considered barr was a disgrace much more hired him. Trump is garbage. He deserves to go to jail, but he won’t, this entire trial is bs astroturf.
I wish it didn’t, what a waste of money paying whatever fee for this.
What a hack piece and I’m surprised to find it here. This was a setup from the word go and Barr is nothing more than a DC insider that wets his pants over the slightest bit of intervention from an outsider. Tru p was negotiating for a return of the documthe whole time. What jurisdiction does this when the person is cooperative?
All those pictures of all those boxes of documents, maybe 30 boxes? The actual number of PAGES of documents totalled about 600!
Ammoland.com you should be ashamed.