Former attorney general Bill Barr had strong words for Donald Trump after the former president was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents, arguing in an interview over the weekend that Trump “constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.”
Speaking to Robert Costa on Sunday’s Face the Nation, Barr was asked to weigh in on Trump’s behavior as alleged in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment. The former president is facing 37 criminal counts, including willful retention of national-defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements. According to Barr, Trump will always gratify his own ego ahead of everything else, including the best interest of the country.
“He’s like a nine-year-old, defiant nine-year-old kid, who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. It’s a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. And he’s a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s, his personal gratification of his ego, but our country can’t be a therapy session for a troubled man like this,” Barr explained.
While Barr is skeptical of many of the probes into Trump, including Alvin Bragg’s case against him in connection with hush-money payments to a porn actress, this one is different, he explained. “If even half of it is true, he is toast,” Barr said in a previous interview on Fox News. “I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.”
“This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here or a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous,” Barr explained Fox News host Shannon Bream. “Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. His adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. And I’ve been at his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He’s not a victim here.”
According to the former attorney general, Jack Smith’s other investigation into Trump in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 is a weaker one. Barr is skeptical of that probe on First Amendment grounds, just as he is skeptical of the Georgia DA’s probe into Trump. Fani Willis is looking into whether the former president in the 2020 elections in that state.
Asked by Costa if the former president should be sentenced to jail as part of any conviction, Barr answered in the negative. “I don’t like the idea of a former president serving time,” he explained.
Barr expanded on his views in an op-ed published by the Free Press on Monday, writing that, while he agrees the former president has been subjected to politically motivated investigations in the past, the latest indictment does not fall into that category.
“Trump has been the victim of witch hunts by obsessive enemies willing to do anything to bring him down. On those occasions—most prominently Russiagate, and more recently the civil and criminal actions against him in New York—I have never shied away from defending him. As his attorney general, I witnessed firsthand the unfair and venomous treatment he, and those in his administration, often received,” Barr writes. “It is also true, as I know well, that Trump is a deeply flawed, incorrigible man who frequently brings calamity on himself and the country through his dishonesty and self-destructive recklessness. Even his supporters, who can’t help but acknowledge that he is own worst enemy, know it.”