Trump attacks 'lethargic' Bill Barr, who said he'd be willing to testify in Jan. 6 trial
Former President Trump on Thursday bashed his former attorney general Bill Barr, mocking him as "slow thinking and lethargic" and complaining that he did not pursue Trump's debunked claims of election fraud after the 2020 election.
Trump routinely targets Barr over the former attorney general's regular television appearances criticizing the former president. But Wednesday's comments came after Barr indicated he'd be willing to testify against Trump in a criminal trial and after a judge warned the former president against trying to influence witnesses.
"Why does FoxNews constantly put on slow thinking and lethargic Bill Barr, who didn’t have the courage or stamina to fight the Radical Left lunatics while he was A.G., and who, even more importantly, refused to fight Election Fraud," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "He knew what was going on, just look at his past remarks! Unless FoxNews starts putting the RIGHT people on, their Ratings will never recover."
In a subsequent post, Trump claimed Barr changed his tune about election fraud after bowing to pressure from Democrats. He shared a video of an interview Barr did with CNN in September of 2020 in which the then-attorney general warned that it was "playing with fire" for the country to expand mail-in voting so rapidly ahead of that year's election amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re a very closely divided country here, and people have to have confidence in the legitimacy of the government,” Barr said at the time. “People trying to change the rules to this methodology, which as a matter of logic is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous, and people are playing with fire.”
Following the election, Barr said the Justice Department had not found instances of widespread fraud like Trump had alleged.
The former attorney general later testified to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots that Trump’s claims of fraud were “bullshit,” “nonsense” and “crazy stuff.” But he told the panel Trump did not show an interest “in what the actual facts were.”
Trump was indicted earlier this month in Washington, D.C., by federal prosecutors over his attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election to President Biden. In a 45-page indictment, the Justice Department alleges Trump engaged in a campaign of “dishonesty, fraud and conceit” to obstruct a “bedrock function” of democracy. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Barr told CBS “of course” when asked if he would be willing to appear as a witness in Trump’s trial. He declined to answer whether he was interviewed by the special counsel in connection to the federal investigation.