Trump wants Obama and Biden indicted for spy campaign, warns AG Barr 'could go down' if he doesn't act soon
President Donald Trump on Thursday, October 8, said in an interview with Fox Business that he has spoken to Attorney General Bill Barr about the key Durham probe into the origins of the investigation of Trump and Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election and got assurance that his administration has “plenty” of proof to bring charges against his main political foes.
The president, who made the call-in interview nearly a week after testing for coronavirus, told Maria Bartiromo that not enough of his political enemies have been arrested and even went to the extent of saying that Barr’s reputation was also at stake. He said in a tone of warning that the AG, one of his closest allies, could discover himself in “a very sad, sad situation” if he did not start rounding them up.
Trump has given enough indication of his angry mood ever since he left Walter Reed Medical Center where he spent three nights for Covid-19 treatment and made a dramatic return to the White House on Monday, October 5. He has shot tweet after tweet, many of them calling for the indictment of figures of the previous Barack Obama administration. The 74-year-old president has been battling a number of challenges ahead of his November 3 re-election battle and his less-than-appreciated conduct in the first presidential debate with Democratic challenger Joe Biden and the diagnosis with coronavirus seem to have delivered two major blows inside a week in a crucial time.
The president continued to ramble during his phone call with Bartiromo where he ran through a long list of grievances. However, he was particularly angry on the issue of Obama-era “crimes” against him for which he wants to see his Democratic predecessor indicted, along with Biden, Hillary Clinton and many others.
'I won't forget it'
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re gonna get little satisfaction unless I win. Because I won’t forget it. But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama, and that includes Biden; these are people that spied on my campaign, and we have everything,” Trump said.
“Now they say they have much more, and I say Bill, you got plenty. You don’t need any more.”
Saying about Barr then, Trump added: “To be honest, Bill Barr’s gonna go down either as the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he’s gonna go down as a very sad, sad situation. I mean, I’ll be honest with you. He’s got all the information he needs. They wanna get more, more, more, they keep getting more, I say: ‘You don’t need any more. You got more stuff than anybody’s ever had.’”
The justice department did not make any immediate response when approached to confirm Trump’s words defining his conversation with the AG.
Barr has been in the past slammed by many of Trump’s critics who accused him of interfering in cases against the president’s associates, including Roger Stone, but the former has defended his independence from the president. In an interview in February, the 70-year-old said: “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody. Whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president.”
In May, Trump’s attack on Obama and appeal to make the former president testify before the Congress was turned down by Lindsey Graham, another loyalist who is also the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham said on that occasion that the idea to haul in Obama was not a practical idea because of the “executive privilege claims” that he enjoys.