Bill Barr Says DOJ ‘Getting Very Close’ to Having Sufficient Evidence to Indict Trump
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Bill Barr, who served as attorney general during the Trump administration, said Wednesday that the Justice Department appears to be “getting very close” to having sufficient evidence to indict former president Trump.
Law enforcement is investigating former president Donald Trump for removal or destruction of records, obstruction of an investigation, and violating the Espionage Act, according to the search warrant for Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Barr said during an appearance on Fox News that government investigators must consider if they have a technical case against Trump and said, “I think they’re getting very close to that point, frankly.”
He added that the DOJ must weigh what the potential fallout of indicting a former president would be as well, including how it would impact the country and what precedent it would set. He said it is his hope that this will deter the DOJ from indicting the former president.
“Will the people really understand that this is not failing to return a library book, that this is serious? And so you have to worry about those things,” he said.
Barr’s comments come days after a federal judge granted Trump’s petition for an independent special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. The order temporarily blocks the government from probing the documents until the review is complete. However, intelligence agencies will be allowed to continue to assess the recovered classified documents to determine whether there was “potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents,” the judge ruled.
Trump arguing a third-party review is necessary because the FBI raid, which occurred just months before the 2022 midterm elections, “involved political calculations aimed at diminishing the leading voice in the Republican Party, President Trump.”
Barr previously called the order “deeply flawed”
“The opinion was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it,” Barr said on Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways. I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory” of the case.
On Wednesday, Barr said the FBI should return documents protected by attorney-client privilege to Trump but that there is “no scenario” in which the government documents, including those that are classified, should be returned to the former president.
“If it deals with government stuff, it goes back to the government,” he said.
He added that investigators can take and keep Trump’s personal items in the event that they serve as evidence of the way the government documents were stored.
“If you find very sensitive documents in Trump’s desk along with his passports, that ties Trump to those documents,” he said.
