Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a thorough assessment on Sunday of the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump, saying that if even half of things Trump is accused of doing are true that the former president is “toast.”
Barr made the remarks during a Fox News interview with Shannon Bream when asked for his analysis of the latest indictment against his former boss. The former attorney general addressed claims from Trump’s allies that the case has to do with the Presidential Records Act and not the Espionage Act—the federal statute that Trump was charged 31 times with allegedly violating.
Barr noted that before the issue blew up into a criminal investigation, it initially was a matter concerning the President Records Act and that the Espionage Act only came into play when he would not return the documents.
“Well, it started out under the Presidential Records Act and the Archives trying to retrieve documents that Trump had no right to have,” Barr said. “But it quickly became clear that what the government was really worried about were these classified and very sensitive documents. I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly. And so the government’s agenda was to get those, protect those documents and get them out. And I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that, it was the right thing to do. And I think the counts under the Espionage Act, that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts.”
Barr cautioned that a court of law will ultimately determine the truth, but warned that “if even half of it is true, then he’s toast.”
“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.”
Barr said the the federal indictment is very different from other cases in which the justice system was weaponized against the former president.
“There was no problem or issue underlying the Russiagate claim. It was an effort to knock him out with a false claim,” Barr said. “Here, I think the government acted responsibly. 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.”
Barr also noted that had Trump simply returned the documents when the National Archives requested them that he likely would not have been indicted.
Pages 28-33 of the indictment show that Trump was charged with willfully retaining national defense documents that were obtained by the U.S. government on the day that he was served the subpoena, June 3, 2022, and the day that Mar-a-Lago was raided, August 8, 2022. He was not charged for any of the classified documents that he returned prior to receiving the subpoena. The remaining criminal charges that he faces, which pertain to his alleged attempts to obstruct the investigation, are all connected to actions that he took after he received the subpoena.
Barr bluntly stated that the documents that Trump had in his possession were “in no universe, Donald J. Trump’s personal documents.”
“They’re official records, they’re not his personal records, battle plans for an attack on another country, or Defense Department documents about our capabilities are in no universe, Donald J. Trump’s personal documents,” he said. “They are the government’s documents.”
Barr noted that his assessment of the situation was not personal and that he repeatedly defended Trump against the Russiagate hoax and that he also slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “politicized hit job” against Trump.
“I have spoken out for 30 years about the abuse of the criminal justice process to influence politics,” Barr said. “But this is simply not true [in this case]. This particular episode of trying to retrieve those documents, the government acted responsibly. And it was Donald J. Trump, who acted irresponsibly.”
WATCH:
WATCH: Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr joins us to give his analysis of the federal indictment against former President Trump. Tune In! #FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/SnsbYht5G0
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 11, 2023