Bill Barr took heat from his predecessor for backing the FBI’s raid of former President Trump’s Florida mansion in light of the Department of Justice’s checkered history regarding the 45th commander-in-chief.
Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker told Just the News that Barr, who succeeded him in February, 2019, should know better than to cover for the DOJ, especially since he exposed so much of the department’s malfeasance in the Russia collusion hoax.
“Bill Barr continues for some reason to be an institutionalist when it comes to the Department of Justice, even though based on what he presided over, he should know better,” Whitaker told the site’s “Just the News, Not Noise” livestream show. “We have seen far too many examples as it relates to Donald Trump, and investigations into Donald Trump, that the Department of Justice just doesn’t seem to follow its own traditions, rules and ethical considerations.”
Matt Whitaker joins Just the News to talk about Bill Barr's recent comments on America https://t.co/rlGZ2hEIxd
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Barr has defended the raid on Mar-a-Lago and said federal judge erred in granting Trump’s lawyer’s request for a neutral “special master” to go through the items the FBI took. Trump’s team claims the FBI used an overbroad search warrant to go on a fishing expedition that netted privileged and private materials.
“The opinion, I think, was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it,” Barr told Fox News this week of District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling. “It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways. I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up.”
Whitaker said the DOJ seized Trump’s passports by mistake and reportedly also took medical records, attorney-client privileged documents, and tax records that were not authorized by the warrant. The DOJ claims it has a “taint team” in place to sift through the records seized the August 8 raid and ensure none are improperly used in investigations of the former president. But Whitaker said Trump should not trust the DOJ to conduct that process fairly and Barr should understand that.
“This was a very broad warrant,” Whitaker said. “And obviously, Judge Cannon was not impressed by the taint team’s work, and [the taint team] just forwarded much of this information on to the investigative team.”
Cannon’s ruling bars the DOJ from using any of the seized materials for its investigation until it has all been screened by the special master, who has not yet been named. In her decision, Cannon chided the DOJ over persistent leaks about the evidence taken in the raid. In a footnote, Cannon said she had queried the DOJ about the leaks, which started immediately after the raid and included unsubstantiated claims Trump had nuclear secrets and a photo of documents spread out on the floor of Trump’s home.
Just days after Cannon, who Trump appointed in 2020, made her ruling, anonymous DOJ sources leaked that documents seized from Trump’s home included classified material on a foreign government’s military defenses, as well as details on top-secret U.S. operations. The Washington Post cited “officials familiar with the criminal investigation” in the Tuesday report.