Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Sunday that former President Trump is the GOP presidential candidate “most likely” to lose to President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.
Barr discussed the charges facing Trump in a New York City hush money case while appearing on ABC’s “This Week.” He said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) was being opaque about the case, which likely means its weak.
But he said that might be good news for Democrats and Biden, assuming the president runs for reelection.
“Ultimately, the savvy Democratic strategists know this is going to help Trump, and they want him to be the nominee because he is the weakest of the Republican candidates, the most likely to lose again to Biden,” Barr said of Bragg’s case.
Trump became the first U.S. president — current or former — to be hit with criminal charges, and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has since fundraised off the indictment and a fake mugshot amid his arraignment.
But Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general from 2019 to 2020, also argued on Sunday that the Manhattan case against Trump isn’t as significant as other issues facing the former president, like a federal investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Barr called Bragg’s case “unjust,” “transparently an abuse of prosecutorial power” and said it may “accomplish its purpose, which is to get into the middle of the Republican primary process and turn it into a circus.”
However, he said other ongoing probes into the president were more justified, arguing that investigators probing his potential mishandling of classified documents likely have “very good evidence” that Trump attempted to keep authorities from obtaining the materials after he left the White House.
“He had no claim to those documents, especially the classified documents. They belonged to the government. And so, I think he was jerking the government around,” Barr said.
“But the government is investigating the extent to which games were played and there was obstruction in keeping documents from them. And I think that’s a serious potential case. I think they probably have some very good evidence there.”
Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign after the midterms in November and now faces a growing field of fellow Republican contenders. His former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley entered the ring earlier this year, followed by conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R).
Marianne Williamson became the first Democrat to enter the party’s primary — but though Biden hasn’t yet announced his campaign, he’s widely expected to seek reelection, which would set the field up for a possible Trump-Biden rematch in 2024.
Polling has shown Trump is still at the top of 2024 GOP primary field, while Trump and Biden are neck-and-neck in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.