Former Trump attorney general Bill Barr gives evidence before the Jan 6 committee

Former Attorney General William Barr has reportedly appeared before the House January 6 select committee to give evidence regarding Donald Trump’s attempts to press the Justice Department into service of his false claims of election fraud.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the nine-member panel pressed the ex-attorney general about interactions he had with Mr Trump in the days following the 3 November 2021 presidential election, when the then-president was claiming to have been the victim of election fraud carried out in cities with large Black populations.

A person familiar with Mr Barr’s interview said the select committee was particularly interested in conversations with Mr Trump detailed in his recent memoir, One Damn Thing After Another.

During one such conversation recounted in his book, Mr Trump claimed to have obtained “absolute proof” that voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems had flipped votes from him to Joe Biden and provided Mr Barr with a report claiming the machines had been “intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results”.

In another, Mr Trump became apoplectic after Mr Barr told an Associated Press reporter that his department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election”.

He recalled that Mr Trump asked him why he would tell the reporter such a thing, and said he replied: “The reporter asked me what the department had found to date, and I told him”.

He then told the then-president: “I’ve told you that the fraud claims are not supported.… And others have also told you this. But your legal team continues to shovel this shit out to the American people. And it is wrong.”

The former attorney general is one of the highest-ranking Trump administration officials to meet with the select committee, which will hold its’ first public hearing in nearly a year on 9 June. The panel has also heard testimony from other members of the former president’s inner circle, including ex-White House advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the former president’s former personal attorney.

The select committee has said it plans to hold a series of 8 hearings during the month of June. The first, which will take place in prime time, will serve to lay out a summary of what it describes as a “coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results” of the 2020 election and install Mr Trump for a second term against the wishes of American voters using witness testimony and material that has not yet been seen by the public.

One select committee member, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in April that the panel’s hearings “will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House”.