Former Attorney General William Barr slammed the Biden administration during an interview late last week over its handling of an apparent leak of a draft of a majority opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that a crime was committed and that the administration’s response has been appalling.
Barr initially responded to the leak of the draft early last week, calling it “unprecedented” and saying that a grand jury would need to be convened to “compel the truth” if anyone would ever be held accountable for the leak.
“It could be obstructing the administration of justice, the due process of justice,” Barr said. “Obstruction means you’re attempting to influence, you know, through some kind of wrongdoing.”
During a Friday interview with Fox News’ Guy Benson, Barr again doubled-down on calling the leak a crime.
“They need to be able to have, you know, discourse within the court in deciding the case and make sure that it’s kept confidential until an opinion comes out. And so this was an obstruction of the judicial process. It was an interference in the due administration of justice,” Barr said. “So I think that it’s a crime that was done. It appears to have been done.”
Barr said that he believes that it’s only a matter of time before evidence emerges that shows that the leak was “done in order to derail the opinion and upset the deliberations of the court.”
“And so I think ultimately it belongs in the criminal justice side of things. And the person who did this should go to jail,” Barr added. “Now, there could be some preliminary review of this thing to see if they can figure out quickly who it is and then turn it over to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
Barr said that officials should be able to narrow down the list of suspects fast due to the limited number of people that had access to the document.
Barr noted there are few people who could have been behind the leak. And as such, authorities “should be able to narrow it down fairly quickly.”
Speaking about the Biden administration’s response to the leak, Barr said, “Well, I was appalled that they didn’t just come out and condemn this.”
“It really to me to, you know, to allow the doxxing of Supreme Court justices. And as [White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki] says, ‘there’s a lot of passion.’ As you say, it was obviously done precisely to intimidate them, and it does expose them to additional threats,” Barr said. “The left has been tolerant of violence for some time now. It’s becoming increasingly shameless.”