Bill Barr is open to testifying in Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial should he be asked, the former attorney general revealed on Sunday.
Mr Barr was speaking with CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation when he was asked the same question that Mike Pence was asked on NBC — would he testify in Mr Trump’s January 6 trial when it goes to court?
And while the former vice president hemmed and hawed before indicating that he wouldn’t try and dodge a subpoena for his testimony, Mr Barr got straight to the point.
“Of course,” he responded.
He also reinforced during the same interview that he had told the president multiple times before the attack on the Capitol that the claims of widespread election fraud being pushed by his campaign were false. The federal government is planning to argue that Mr Trump ignored the reality of the situation and pushed forward with a plan to interfere in the election’s certification despite having been advised his efforts were unconstitutional and not backed up by the facts surrounding the election.
Mr Barr is one of a number of ex-Trump administration officials who have come forward and said that government agencies never saw any convincing evidence to support the Trump campaign’s claims of a stolen election; he, in particular, has referred to the conspiracies spread by Rudy Giuliani et al as “bulls***”.
But the Trump circle continues to insist that long-debunked claims of phantom ballots and votes from dead people are legitimate, while also making the bizarre insistence that the Trump-controlled federal government’s warnings to social media companies about potential Russian disinformation efforts led to the unfair suppression of stories in conservative media about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s adult son. Republicans have argued that emails sent by the younger Biden indicate an influence-trading scheme involving foreign interests and now-President Joe Biden, though this remains wholly unproven.
Former President Trump is now facing 78 criminal charges spread across state and federal jurisdictions, including four relating to his campaign to overturn the lawful and valid results of the 2020 election. The federal government argues that Mr Trump’s efforts to block Mr Biden from being certified as the winner of the election on January 6 after his failure to prove fraud in the courts constituted an effort to deprive millions of Americans of their right to a duly-elected leader. He has denied wrongdoing in all of his criminal matters.
The ex-president is expected to face more charges, according to his own legal team, in Georgia’s ongoing grand jury investigation into Mr Trump’s efforts to change the election results in that state. A decision on that matter is expected this month.
