Bill Barr Blasts Trump Again by Calling Special Master Ruling ‘Deeply Flawed’

Former Attorney General Bill Barr continued his newfound role as Donald Trump’s chief legal critic on Tuesday, arguing in an appearance on Fox News that a federal judge’s decision to appoint a special master to review seized classified documents was a mistake.

“The opinion, I think, was wrong,” Barr told Martha MacCallum on Tuesday’s The Story. “I think the government should appeal it. It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.”

He predicted the ruling would be successfully appealed but would nevertheless end up being nothing more than a “rain delay for a couple of innings.” Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, approved Trump’s request for a special master to scan the documents for both attorney-client and executive privilege, temporarily halting the Justice Department’s review of the documents and entering unprecedented legal territory.

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Trump has claimed some of the documents seized by the FBI are privileged, while others (or all) are declassified. His lawyers successfully argued a special master was needed to weed out privileged material and personal items swept up in the seizure.

But Barr said Trump’s argument over the documents’ contents effectively does not matter, as the issue instead resides with Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and whether he deceived the government over how many documents were kept at Mar-a-Lago.

“Government documents were taken, classified information was taken and not handled appropriately, and they’re looking into—and there’s some evidence that suggests—that they were deceived,” Barr said. “None of that really relates to the content of documents. It relates to the fact that there were documents there.”

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Barr has taken a contrarian approach to Trump’s legal opinions since Friday, telling both Fox News and The New York Times that a special master was unnecessary as the government’s concerns over national security were valid. The Department of Justice argued against Trump’s request in court, saying in part that its own filter team had already weeded out a small number of privileged documents.

The DOJ has not publicly decided whether it will appeal the special master decision, but if it chose to do so, it risks delaying the legal battle by several months.

While Barr—who has said he would vote for Trump again in 2024—was diplomatic in his comments to Fox, his New York Times interview was much more dismissive.

“I think it’s a crock of shit,” he told the Times. “I don’t think a special master is called for.”

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