Former president Donald Trump lashed out at his former attorney general, William Barr, over the weekend after Barr harshly criticized the 37-count federal indictment Trump is currently facing.
Barr stated on “Fox News Sunday” that the former president would be “toast” if even half of the allegations in the federal indictment are proven true in court. Barr frequently defended Trump during his administration and defended him against Manhattan District Attorney Al Bragg’s indictment.
“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 took his reaction to social media, saying, “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 claimed in the interview that the purpose of the Russiagate hoax was to “knock [Trump] out with a false claim,” but he emphasized that the current situation is profoundly 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 to disparage Barr during an appearance on “The Roger Stone Show” on 77 WABC, referring to him as a “low life.”
However, Mediaite noted that Trump had limits when it came to disparaging Barr and, when prodded, would not refer to Barr as a member of “the Deep State.”
“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.