Former Attorney General Bill Barr says he’d be willing to testify against former President Donald Trump in the ongoing case related to Trump’s handling of classified documents as president.
Trump is accused of mishandling an array of classified documents, including documents classified as “top secret,” the highest level of classification. Trump has dismissed the investigation, led by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, as “partisan” and a “witch hunt.”
Now Barr, who has already been critical of his former boss, said he’d be willing to testify against Trump if asked by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the federal action against Trump.
“If they called me in as a witness, of course, I would testify,” Barr said during a June 18 appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding that he doesn’t expect to be called in for any such testimony.
Barr, a former Trump ally who served as his attorney general, has increasingly sought to distance himself from Trump since the end of the 2020 election. The former attorney general now says he’s “adamantly against” another Trump presidency.
Barr rejected Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud had tainted the election result in several key swing states, as he testified to the now-defunct House Select Committee on Jan. 6. Barr has said that Trump was “responsible in the broad sense” for the Capitol breach.
Barr also rejected Trump’s position during his appearance on CBS, criticizing his former commander in chief of having brought it on himself.
“This is not a circumstance where [Trump is] the victim or this was government overreach,” Barr said. “He provoked this whole problem himself. Yes, he’s been the victim of unfair witch hunts in the past, but that doesn’t obviate the fact that he’s also a fundamentally flawed person who engages in reckless conduct.
“And that leads to calamitous situations like this, which are very disruptive and hurt any political causes he’s associated with.
“This was a case entirely of his own making,” Barr added.
Barr said that Trump had “no legal right” to the documents, and applauded the government for its efforts to get the documents back “quietly and with respect,” which Barr said was “essential” to the case.
Trump has argued that his conduct was protected under the Presidential Records Act, a bill governing the presidential management of documents taken from the White House upon leaving office. However, rather than the Presidential Records Act, Special Counsel Smith is seeking charges under the Espionage Act; World War 1 legislation that has been substantially amended and expanded over the years.
Barr argued against Trump’s position that the president outlined on CBS.
“The legal theory by which he gets to take battle plans and sensitive national security information, as his personal papers is absurd,” Barr said.
“The whole purpose of the statute … was to stop presidents from taking official documents out of the White House—it was passed after Watergate. … It restricted what a President can take,” Barr said, citing the law’s standard of “purely private” papers, meaning papers “that had nothing to do with the deliberations of government policy.
“Obviously, these documents are not purely private,” he said. “They’re not even arguing that it’s purely private. What they’re saying is the President just has sweeping discretion to say they are [purely private] even though they squarely don’t fall within the definition. It’s an absurd argument.”
via zerohedge