Trump attorney general pick a prolific donor to GOP candidates, groups: report

President Trump’s new pick for attorney general, William Barr, has been a prolific donor to GOP candidates and groups, donating more than $567,000 in the past 20 years, according to a Washington Post analysis. 

No other attorneys general have donated to partisan causes at the same level since 1980, when the earliest available online records became available, the Post analysis found.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under former President Obama, came the closest, donating $37,000 to Democrats before he took office in 2009, according to the newspaper. Holder was also a campaign bundler for Obama, raising over $50,000.

{mosads}Barr previously served as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. Since leaving office in 1993, he and his wife, Christine Barr, have been reliable donors for Republican candidates and groups, according to federal records reviewed by the Post.

Barr contributed to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and President Trump in 2016. He donated $2,700 to Trump’s presidential campaign and $55,000 to Republican Jeb Bush’s campaign. 

Barr also donated $50,000 total in 2016 for the GOP House and Senate campaign committees, though he did not donate to the Republican National Committee.

“Bill Barr might be the single most qualified nominee for U.S. Attorney General in the history of the country,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement emailed to The Hill on Wednesday. “That’s why he has earned bipartisan praise over decades of service.”

“To question his independence because he supported the President in whose cabinet he will serve is insulting and entirely inconsistent with how Attorneys General during the Obama Administration were treated,” she added.

A White House official told the Post that it is “absurd for critics to focus on financial support he provided to his party, which is consistent with what attorneys general have done previously.” The official also pointed out that Barr made the contributions during his time as a career prosecutor, not as a political appointee.

Barr has recently criticized parts of Mueller’s probe and defended Trump’s decision to fire James Comey as FBI director.

If confirmed, Barr will replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned as attorney general at Trump’s request in early November after months of attacks from the president over his recusal from the Russia investigation. 

Barr and his wife donated $27,600 in 2008 to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the House Judiciary Committee chairman who has led a probe into the Justice Department’s handling of the Russia investigation, the Post noted.