Will Donald Trump sack William Barr? Sources say POTUS is livid with AG for disputing his voter fraud claims
Attorney General Bill Barr has been one of President Donald Trump’s closest lieutenants, remaining loyal to him on various key issues. However, the 70-year-old still might not be able to save himself from the ire of the commander-in-chief, thanks to his disagreement with the latter on the most burning topic at the moment: The 2020 presidential election.
Barr recently said in an interview with the Associated Press that attorneys and FBI agents have been working hard to follow up on specific complaints and information that they have got but they “have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election." His stand is in sharp contrast with Trump who has been repeatedly claiming that the election was stolen by his opponents and refused to concede it. Trump’s leading lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has been trying tirelessly to turn the election results around by challenging them legally, blasted Barr saying the Justice Department did not undertake a probe despite them producing evidence of illegal voting in at least six states.
The Washington Post on Wednesday, December 2, came up with a report saying the president was livid with the attorney general for publicly contradicting his claim of election fraud and could end up firing the latter. If sacked, Barr, who took office in February last year, will be the latest among the top office holders that Trump removed after the presidential election. They include the likes of former defense secretary Mark Esper and former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency chief Chris Krebs.
The WaPo report said: “One senior administration official said there was a chance Trump would fire his attorney general and asserted that the president was not merely frustrated over Barr’s fraud-related assertions... The person said that several people are trying to persuade Trump not to do so. Like others, this official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”
“Trump, the official said, was perhaps even angrier that Connecticut US Attorney John Durham did not issue a public report of his findings before last month’s election, and that Barr had secretly appointed Durham as special counsel in October, giving him extra legal and political protection to continue the work he started a year ago,” the report added. “Durham is examining whether crimes were committed by law enforcement during its 2016 investigation of whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia.”
Trump expressed unhappiness with Barr in October
In October, Trump expressed his displeasure with Barr for not being able to take action against his domestic opponents like former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
The attorney general has been generally slammed for using the justice department to pursue political grievances against the Trump administration, including pushing to dismiss their own charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and downplaying what the Mueller report has found. But while has empowered his department to look into the claims of large-scale election fraud, no credible proof has been found.