William Barr, a former U.S. Attorney General that held the role two times under both former President George H.W. Bush and later under former President Donald Trump, issued a response to Trump speaking out to label him a “RINO” by claiming that he has been a hardcore Republican for ages.
This criticism of Barr coming from Trump seems to be in response to Barr issuing comments on Friday evening about the most recent updates surrounding the criminal investigation into just how the former president handled various bits of classified information at Mar-a-Lago, his Floridian mansion home.
“Bill Barr had ‘no guts,’ and got ‘no glory,’” Trump stated via a social media post. “He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats … Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina.”
Martha MacCallum, an anchor for Fox News, asked Barr this Tuesday evening what he thought about his being labeled as a “RINO” by Trump, to which Barr answered, “I mean I heard that — I’ve heard that a lot.”
“But, you know, I — you have to remember — a RINO for him is anyone who disagrees with him that the election was stolen, right? That’s a RINO,” Barr went on. “Now, you know, as someone who handed out Barry Goldwater literature when I was 14 years old on the Upper West Side, it’s a little silly for —”
“You don’t think your Republican credentials are in question?” MacCallum asked while chuckling.
“Right,” Barr stated while also laughing.
Trump’s statements about the former attorney general on Friday seemed to come after Barr outright discounted the push from Trump’s legal team to appoint a “special master” to look over the items that were seized as part of the FBI raid carried out against Mar-a-:ago. Barr labeled it “a bit of a red herring.”
“The only documents that have been taken, it seems to me, that there’s a legitimate concern about keeping away from the government and insulating the government from would be documents relating to his private lawyer communications, him as an individual and his outside lawyers,” Barr stated. “If there’s stuff like that, fine, identify it. There doesn’t appear to be much of it. I’m not sure you need a special master to identify it.”
“But what people are missing is that all the other documents taken, even if they claim to be executive privilege, either belong to the government because they’re government records — even if they’re classified, even if they’re subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government and go to the Archives,” he went on. “And any other documents that were seized, like news clippings and other things that were in the boxes containing the classified information, those were seizable under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held. So, I think it’s a red herring … at this stage, since they have already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time.”
John Roberts, another host for Fox News, questioned Barr about if there was “any legitimate reason” for Trump to be in possession of the documents that were gathered as part of the raid, which included “top secret/SCI materials.”
“No. I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they should have been — could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” stated Barr. “I, frankly, am skeptical of this claim that ‘I declassified everything,’ because, frankly, I think it’s highly improbable. And, second, if, in fact, he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse, and that — and show such recklessness, that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
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