Former Attorney General Bill Barr said on Friday that it is “increasingly more likely” that Trump will be indicted.
Barr’s claim came shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a special counsel to oversee two investigations into former President Donald Trump, who said he would not “partake” in the probes.
“If the Department of Justice can show that these were indeed very sensitive documents, which I think they probably were, and also show that the president consciously was involved in misleading the department, deceiving the government, and playing games after he had received the subpoena for the documents, those are serious charges,” Barr said in a PBS interview on Friday.
Garland appointed Jack Smith, whose background includes investigating and prosecuting war crimes at The Hague, as special prosecutor on Friday to oversee two probes: one into the handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, and one involving aspects of a January 6 investigation, including the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the Capitol riot. Smith said on Friday: “The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch.”
“The Department of Justice has long recognized that in certain extraordinary cases, it is in the public’s interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution…The extraordinary circumstances here demand it,” Garland said.
Later on Friday, Trump called Garland’s move an “appalling announcement today by the egregiously corrupt Biden administration and their weaponized Department of Justice.”
“I have never heard of such a thing. They found nothing. I announce and then they appoint a special prosecutor,” the former president added, as he announced his 2024 White House run on Tuesday. “I have been going through this for six years — for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore.”
“This is a disgrace and only happening because I am leading in every poll in both parties,” Trump said. Despite his claims, a number of mega donors have indicated that they will divorce from Trump to back another potential 2024 Republican nominee, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, The Hill reported.
Kelly Rissman
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