Is the president doing some eleventh-hour house-cleaning?
Attorney General William Barr turned in his resignation on Monday, with the change scheduled to take effect next week.
President Trump announced the changeup on Twitter Monday evening, writing that he and Barr “had a very nice meeting” and that the relationship between the two men “has been a very good one.”
He added that “Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General.”
In Barr’s resignation letter, shared on Twitter by the president, the attorney general wrote that he is “greatly honored that you called on me to serve your Administration and the American people once again as Attorney General.”
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“I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people,” Barr wrote.
Barr also asserted that vote fraud “allegations will continue to be pursued.”
“At a time when the country is so deeply divided, it is incumbent on all levels of government, and all agencies acting within their purview, to do all we can to assure the integrity of elections and promote public confidence in their outcome,” Barr wrote.
He also leveled plenty of praise on his boss, calling the president’s record “all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance.”
“Your 2016 victory speech in which you reached out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr wrote to the president.
“The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your Administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia,” Barr continued. “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”
The head of the Justice Department even touted the economy under President Trump, calling it “the strongest and most resilient” in American history, and one “that brought unprecedented progress to those previously left out.”
“You have restored American military strength. By brokering historic peace deals in the Mideast you have achieved what most thought impossible,” Barr wrote. “You have curbed illegal immigration and enhanced the security of our nation’s borders. You have advanced the rule of law by appointing a record number of judges committed to constitutional principles.”
Yet the kind words between president and attorney general mask the dissatisfaction with Barr that President Trump has expressed on previous occasions.
A source allegedly familiar with White House matters told CNN that on Friday, the president raised the possibility of firing Barr, furious that the AG worked to keep the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes from becoming public before the November election.
Barr also recently claimed that the Justice Department has not unearthed evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election, contradicting claims from President Trump and his team.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press.
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” the attorney general said.
Two days before that, President Trump told Fox News that the DOJ has been “missing in action” on election fraud. The president complained to Sunday Morning Futures’ Maria Bartiromo that he has “not seen anything” from the DOJ or FBI regarding the 2020 election.
“You would think if you’re in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is the biggest thing you could be looking at. Where are they? I’ve not seen anything,” he said, adding that the agencies “just keep moving along and they go on to the next president.”
Barr has indeed been missing in action on one of the most consequential issues facing the nation today. It’s fitting that he should be retired and space made for someone who’s really up to the job.
