Former U.S. Attorney Bill Barr told then-President Donald Trump his campaign’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit,” according to testimony aired Monday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Barr, along with others involved in the campaign, testified that they repeatedly told Trump no credible evidence was found of election fraud, yet Trump continued to amplify the false narrative to his supporters.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, said during her opening remarks Monday that the testimony would show Trump “rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim [that] he won and insist that the vote counting stop.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump 2020 reelection campaign, testified that Giuliani “was definitely intoxicated” while at the White House on election night in 2020. According to Miller, Giuliani told Trump he had won and suggested they declare victory, but Miller said he was unaware of Giuliani’s level of intoxication when he spoke with Trump.
Barr told the committee that on election night, as votes were still being counted, Trump declared that there had been fraud without any evidence to bolster the claim.
In the days following the Nov. 2 election, Barr said his office was “playing whack-a-mole” trying to deal with an avalanche of fraud allegations. He described the early allegations as “completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation.”
Barr claimed when meeting with Trump for the first time since the election on Nov. 23, 2020, the president complained that the U.S. Department of Justice apparently didn’t think it had to investigate the claims of election fraud. Barr said he told Trump that the “department doesn’t take sides in elections and the department is not an extension of your legal team,” and that the department had indeed been investigating the fraud claims and that none of them had been meritorious.
“I told him that the stuff his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit. I mean that the claims of fraud were bullshit. And he was indignant about that,” Barr stated.
Barr said he also told the former president that the claims that Dominion voting machines were rigged were “idiotic.” Barr said the allegations of voting machine fraud were particularly “disturbing,” because even though they lacked any real merit, they had led the public to believe “there was systemic corruption” and “that their votes didn’t count.”
“I told him it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on it and it was doing a great, great disservice to the country,” Barr testified.
Barr announced his resignation on Dec. 14, 2020.
Read more articles from Haute Lawyer, visit https://hauteliving.com/hautelawyer
