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Attorney General William Barr braced for the unprecedented fury shown by President Donald Trump when told that Special Advocate John Durham would likely not complete the criminal investigation into the Russia probe before the next Biden administration, according to a new book.
The fiery episode occurred in early December during a White House meeting after Barr explained why he told The Associated Press that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud during the 2020 election, wrote Watergate Detective Bob Woodward and fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa in Peril, which was published Tuesday.
Already frustrated by Barr’s refusal to back his allegations of stolen elections, Trump has asked his attorney general when Durham’s investigation into the origins and conduct of the Russia inquiry he often calls “will end.” witch hunt”. The so-called “investigator investigation” had become another hot topic for Trump due to the lack of developments ahead of the November competition.
Barr told Trump he doesn’t know when Durham might end, as the investigation is proceeding at its own pace based on the evidence. Still, he postulated, “I imagine it would be in the early part of the Biden administration, hopefully in the first six months.”
This made Trump scream.
“First part of the Biden administration!” he roared.
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At this point, Woodward and Costa enter Barr’s head, describing what he saw and thought.
Oh, shit, Barr thought. Trump was smoking. Barr had never seen Trump in such a fury. If a human can get flames out of their ears, that’s it. Barr imagined the flames. He had never seen Trump crazier. But Trump was obviously trying to control himself. It settled down and then burst into flames, ”the authors wrote.
Former President Donald Trump and former Attorney General William Barr. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci)
As revealed in the same interview with an Associated Press reporter in early December, Barr granted Durham, a U.S. lawyer from Connecticut at the time, special adviser status. Durham resigned his post as US lawyer in February after President Joe Biden decided to replace the country’s top federal prosecutors with his own people, but he was allowed to continue his review of the Russia investigation in as special advocate.
More than eight months after the start of the Biden administration, the Durham investigation remains active. The most recent development came last week when a lawyer linked to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign pleaded not guilty after being charged with lying to the FBI.
As recently as last month, Trump unveiled the duration of the Durham effort.
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“Every time I speak I say, ‘Where’s Durham? “It should never have been allowed to be put in the Biden administration,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Authors Robert Costa and Bob Woodward. (AP Photo)
A previous chapter in Woodward and Costa’s book discussed how Barr found himself performing cleanup duties after Trump told Fox News in May 2020 that former DOJ and FBI officials deserved prosecution, and he blamed former President Barack Obama and then Vice President Biden for what has been dubbed “Obamagate”.
“People should go to jail for this stuff… It was all Obama. It was all Biden. These people were corrupt. Everything was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them,” Trump said.
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“For Barr, this was a dramatic overshoot on Trump’s part. He had told him he had to be patient about the Durham inquiry, especially as the pandemic has slowed operations in the whole department. Let’s leave Durham alone, “the book reads.
Barr then made a statement at a press conference to say he did not expect a criminal investigation into Obama or Biden.
Barr prepared a little speech for a press conference the next day. He said he was fed up with politicians using the “justice system as a political weapon.” By raising Biden and Obama as targets, Trump was effectively discrediting Durham’s work. Barr knew that if Trump continued, Durham would step down, “Woodward and Costa wrote.
Barr also told Trump he would not let outside opinions dictate the direction of the Durham inquiry, according to the book.
Special Advisor John Durham. (Photo Bob Child / AP)
“I know people want accounts and we are working on it, but it won’t, we won’t do it politically and it won’t be tit for tat,” Barr told Trump. And he recalled to the president that the Supreme Court recently ruled that anything that is considered an abuse of power does not legally amount to a crime. Trump has said he hated that response, “the book said.
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Barr resigned his post just before Christmas, and Trump has since called it “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”
For Peril, Woodward and Costa conducted over 200 interviews, resulting in over 6,000 pages of transcripts, and had access to “unpublished material from secret orders, confidential call transcripts, diaries, emails, meeting and other notes and government records, ”publisher Simon & Schuster said in a statement.
Trump responded to early reports on the book by stating, in part, that he viewed Woodward and “his cohorts” as “extremely dishonorable people.”
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Key words: News, William Barr, Donald Trump, Justice Department, Bob Woodward, John Durham
Original author: Daniel Chaitin
Original location: Barr had an ‘Oh, shit’ moment when Trump exploded over Durham: book
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