Barr says Trump docs indictment ‘entirely of his own making’

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Monday the indictment against his former boss Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents is “entirely of his own making” and “not the result of unfair government prosecution.”

“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 article for The Free Press. “The effort to present Trump as a victim in the Mar-a-Lago document affair is cynical political propaganda.”

The former AG went on to dispute that Trump, 77, is “the victim of a political witch hunt being carried out by the deep state during a presidential campaign in order to take out the Republican front-runner,” while acknowledging that the former president had “been the victim of witch hunts” in the past — namely, the FBI’s Russia investigation and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment earlier this year on 34 counts of business fraud.

But Barr, who also served as attorney general under former President H.W. Bush, said “Trump is a deeply flawed, incorrigible man who frequently brings calamity on himself and the country through his dishonesty and self-destructive recklessness,” which he said was evident in the documents case.

The former president was arraigned and pleaded not guilty last week on 37 counts of having unlawfully withheld sensitive national defense information and potential US military strike plans — and then lying to federal officials about having done so.

According to the 49-page indictment, Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, moved boxes of the material around Mar-a-Lago without his lawyers’ knowledge to hide the contents from the National Archives, as well as the FBI and Justice Department. The boxes were stored in a ballroom, bathroom, bedroom and basement storage room that was easily accessible — including to potential foreign agents.

“His handling of these documents in bathrooms and ballrooms at Mar-a-Lago was lawless and exposed the country to intolerable risk,” Barr said of the ex-commander-in-chief’s actions. “The government had every right—indeed, it had no choice—but to retrieve this material.”

The decision to retain the documents, Barr added, “was an act of self-assertion merely to gratify his ego.”

The two-time attorney general also dismissed an argument pushed by Trump allies and other Republicans that under the Presidential Records Act the documents could be kept, pointing out that presidents may only hold onto private documents unrelated to their official duties.

Trump suggested last week that former President Bill Clinton had made use of the law, passed after the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, to improperly keep recordings of interviews he gave that mixed personal recollections with official presidential business.

However, Barr noted, the documents Trump held onto were not private and he had no authority to relabel them as such. Instead, he obstructed justice, “stymied the government for a year” and took no steps to declassify them.

Trump then, according to Barr, backed his lawyers into a corner by not telling them of his attempts to conceal the documents, leading one member of his legal team to unknowingly sign a false statement that a “diligent” search had been done to find them.

“All the razzle-dazzle about Trump’s supposed rights under the Presidential Records Act is a sideshow,” he said. “At its core, this is an obstruction case.”

While the Department of Justice has invited accusations of a “double standard” by letting Hillary Clinton off the hook for “comparable behavior” in keeping classified information on her private email server, according to Barr, prosecutors could “rectify it by applying the right standard to the case at hand,” — as well as other investigations of first son Hunter Biden and President Biden, which also involve the alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“I don’t like the idea of a former president serving time in prison,” Barr told CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Sunday. But the former attorney general argued Monday that it was “untenable” for Republicans to back Trump in the 2024 primary.