Donald Trump, a former president, lashed out at William Barr, his former attorney general, over the weekend after Barr harshly critiqued the 37-count federal indictment Trump is currently facing.
Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” that the former president was “toast” if even half the allegations in the federal indictment are found to be true and are proven in court. Barr frequently defended Trump throughout the course of his administration and supported him against the indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“It’s a very detailed indictment and it’s very, very damning,” Barr said. “And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, or a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous. Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. Yes, 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.”
Trump took his reaction to social media, saying, “Virtually everyone is saying that the Indictment is about Election Interference & should not have been brought, except Bill Barr, a ‘disgruntled former employee’ & lazy Attorney General who was weak & totally ineffective.”
“He doesn’t mean what he’s saying, it’s just MISINFORMATION,” Trump wrote. “Barr’s doing it because he hates ‘TRUMP’ for firing him. He was deathly afraid of the Radical Left when they said they would Impeach him. He knows the Indictment is Bull…. Turn off FoxNews when that ‘Gutless Pig’ is on!”
In the interview, Barr claimed that the purpose of the Russiagate fake was to “knock [Trump] out with a false claim,” but he also emphasized that this situation is fundamentally different.
“Here, I think the government acted responsibly,” Barr said. “They gave him every opportunity to return those documents. They acted with restraint. They were very deferential to him. And they were very patient. They talked to him for almost a year to try to get those documents and he jerked them around. They finally went to a subpoena, and what did he do? According to the government, he lied and obstructed that subpoena. And then they did a search, and they found a lot more documents.”
During an appearance on “The Roger Stone Show” on 77 WABC, Trump continued to criticize Barr and referred to him as a “low life.”
However, Mediaite pointed out that Trump had his boundaries when it came to criticizing Barr and would not, when pressed, refer to Barr as a member of “the Deep State.”
“I think he’s a coward who didn’t do his job,” Trump said. “We had unbelievable people as you know, in the administration, but we also had some that we got wrong and Bill Barr was a mistake. And you know, too bad — but he was a mistake.”
“And now he goes and he sits down — if they can find a chair for him, because it’s not that easy — and he sits down and he just bloviates and it’s disgraceful,” Trump said. “It’s actually unpatriotic. It’s so bad for our country, just so bad. But, you know, he’s got a lot of hatred.”
“When I talk about a slob like Bill Barr, just a stupid person in a lot of ways, this is really not the standard,” Trump said.
