Former President Donald Trump raged at his former Attorney General William Barr over the weekend after Barr gave a brutal assessment of the 37-count federal indictment Trump now faces.
Barr, who repeatedly defended Trump throughout the course of his administration and took his side against the indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, told “Fox News Sunday” that the former president was “toast” if even half the things in the federal indictment are proven in court to be true.
“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 first responded by writing on social media: “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!”
Barr said during the interview that the Russiagate hoax was created to “knock [Trump] out with a false claim,” but cautioned that this case is very 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.”
Trump continued his attacks on Barr during an interview on “The Roger Stone Show” on 77 WABC, calling Barr a “low life.”
Mediaite noted though that Trump had his limits in attacking Barr and refused to say that Barr was part of “the Deep State” when asked about it.
“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.