Former Attorney General Bill Barr is calling for Republicans to “come to grips” with the “hard truths” about former President Trump’s conduct in the classified documents case that resulted in Trump’s latest indictment.
“For the sake of the country, our party, and a basic respect for the truth, it is time that Republicans come to grips with the hard truths about President Trump’s conduct and its implications,” Barr wrote in an op-ed published in The Free Press on Monday.
“Chief among them: Trump’s indictment is not the result of unfair government persecution,” Barr continued. “This is a situation entirely of his own making. The effort to present Trump as a victim in the Mar-a-Lago document affair is cynical political propaganda.”
Barr, who served as attorney general under Trump, suggested that the former president took classified materials with him from the White House simply to “gratify his ego.”
“Why would Trump risk the safety of the American people by hanging on to these documents in the face of the government’s lawful demands for their return?” he asked. “Knowing him, it was an act of self-assertion merely to gratify his ego.”
While the former attorney general characterized other investigations into Trump as “witch hunts” and agreed with his fellow Republicans’ complaints about a “double standard,” he argued that this “sidesteps the real questions raised by Trump’s behavior.”
“It is not clear to me that giving Trump a pass would be the best way of restoring the rule of law and putting the double standard behind us,” Barr said.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in Miami last week related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to block the government from recovering them.