Bill Barr says Trump 2020 fraud claims ‘led to the rioting on Capitol Hill’ in scathing book excerpt

Former Attorney General Bill Barr unleashed on his former boss in his forthcoming memoir, claiming Donald Trump ‘lost his grip’ when he began pushing his baseless 2020 election fraud theories, according to a Sunday report.

Barr said those theories directly ‘led to the rioting on Capitol Hill’ on January 6 last year in an excerpt from his 600-page new book that was shared with the Wall Street Journal.

‘The election was not “stolen.” Trump lost it,’ the former attorney general states plainly in ‘One Damn Thing After Another.’ The lengthy memoir recounts his time as the Republican president’s attorney general.

Trump and Barr’s relationship soured after Barr, the nation’s top law enforcement official at the time, told the Associated Press on December 1, 2020 that his Justice Department found no evidence of widespread election fraud. 

Barr left his post at the end of that month, just weeks before Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 results.

Trump called Barr a ‘disappointment in every sense of the word’ in June of last year. 

In the new excerpt Barr writes that Trump could have won the election fairly had he ‘just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.’

He also detailed an explosive confrontation with Trump that led to his resignation shortly after that Associated Press interview.

‘This is killing me — killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,’ Barr claims Trump shouted, just hours after he further legitimized Joe Biden’s electoral victory. 

Former Attorney General Bill Barr unleashes on his old boss Donald Trump in his forthcoming memoir, after becoming one of his most scathing critics following the 2020 election

Barr writes that Trump then told him: ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’

The seasoned DOJ veteran defended himself, writing that he replied to Trump that he had ‘sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged.’

He also restated that the DOJ failed to verify accusations the election was rigged, as Trump lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis launched on a nationwide tour to promote the conspiracy theories at the time. 

Trump then embarked on a tirade full of his criticisms against Barr, the ex-attorney general recalls, until Barr finally offered to resign his post.

‘Accepted!’ Trump reportedly shouted while slamming his desk. 

‘Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!’

Barr’s account claims White House lawyers talked Trump out of his DOJ head’s immediate dismissal.  

Until their rift over the election, Barr had been one of Trump’s closest allies and was even criticized by Democrats who claimed he weaponized the DOJ on the ex-president’s behalf.  

Trump said Barr was a ‘disappointment in every sense of the word’ last year and according to the book, yelled at the ex-attorney general over his statement that there was no widespread election fraud

But in his memoir, Barr now urges his fellow Republicans to move past Trump and to look at ‘an impressive array of younger candidates’ who share similar conservative goals without Trump’s bombastic and chaotic style.

He claims Trump has ‘shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.’

Particularly, it seems, after having ‘lost his grip’ and also losing the election. 

‘The absurd lengths to which he took his “stolen election” claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,’ Barr writes.

The House of Representatives select committee that’s investigating the January 6 Capitol riot has been examining Trump’s actions after Barr’s departure and before the riot, particularly the ex-president’s reported attempts to instill a lower-level loyalist in the DOJ to lead the department.

Barr himself has reportedly spoken to the Democrat-led committee, its chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson revealed late last month.

After Barr left the DOJ with less than a month to go until Trump was out of office, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen took his place. 

But Rosen was soon the focus of a pressure campaign by ex-DOJ lawyer Jeffrey Clark. Clark first wanted Rosen to send a letter to the Georgia Secretary of State and officials in other battleground states claiming the DOJ was investigating ‘serious irregularities’ in the presidential vote count and asked that they convene the legislature to examine ‘new evidence’ and ‘deliberate matter consistent with its duties under the constitution.’

‘The absurd lengths to which he took his “stolen election” claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill’ on January 6 last year, Barr writes

Rosen reportedly refused, and Trump’s subsequent threat to have him replaced with Clark was thwarted during a January 3, 2021 Oval Office meeting.

Over the course of three hours Trump and officials from the DOJ and White House council’s office discussed Trump potentially replacing Rosen with Clark and whether Clark was even qualified to do so. Clark allegedly made it apparent that he would send his letter if he took over the DOJ.

But the DOJ officials ‘made clear that all of the Assistant Attorneys General would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark,’ a recent report published by Senate Democrats states.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick F. Philbin soon followed, with Cipollone telling Trump that Clark’s letter amounted to a ‘murder-suicide pact.’   

Trump never followed through. Clark was among the members of Trump’s orbit subpoenaed by the Capitol riot committee.

After voting to refer him for a House-wide contempt vote two months ago, the panel had paused action on Clark over his insistence on pleading the fifth.

He was spotted on February 2 entering a room inside a US House of Representatives office building where the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack conducts its depositions.