Former Attorney General William Barr suggested during his first interview since the Capitol riot that there were three factors he believes contributed to the incident two weeks ago.
Barr made the remarks during an interview with ITV, a British television channel, which follows earlier comments he made shortly after the riot when he said that Trump’s actions were a “betrayal of his office and supporters” and that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.”
Regarding whether he thought if questions about the integrity of the election were “the final straw” that led to the riots, Barr said, “I think that that was the thing that precipitated the riots on the Hill.”
“Now, I think it’s always important to remember that most people are exercising their First Amendment rights, but there’s a substantial group, obviously, that went far beyond that and broke into the Capitol and tried to interfere with the proceedings and that’s unacceptable,” Barr said. “I’m sad to, but not surprised in a way to see, the kind of violence we saw in Capitol Hill. I consider it despicable and I was not attorney general, I had already left office when that occurred, but I felt that they should move very quickly to disperse that regardless of which side of the political spectrum is involved. We just cannot tolerate violence, interfering with the processes of government.”
When asked whether he thought President Donald Trump incited the rioters, Barr responded, “I’ll leave it to the people who are looking into the genesis of this to say whether incitement was involved.”
Barr then pointed to three things that he believes contributed to what happened, saying, “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘inevitable,’ but I think that when you start suppressing free speech, when people lose confidence in the media, and also when they lose faith in the integrity of elections, you’re going to have some people resort to violence.”
While Biden did not get into specifics, it was well-documented late in the presidential campaign that social media companies took action to limit the spread of news reports about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, that were damaging to Biden. Most of the news media also largely ignored the story.
NPR went as far as to tell its audience: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
It was only a few weeks after the election that Hunter Biden came forward and admitted that he was under federal criminal investigation for matters related to his taxes. Subsequent reporting indicated that the criminal investigation involved his overseas business dealings, including his business dealings in communist China.