President Donald Trump and a number of his allies, including third-party lawyers, fought for months in an attempt to prove in court that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” but ultimately came up short, even in front of Trump-appointed federal judges.
While that claim will be questioned for generations to come, according to The Hill, former U.S. Attorney General William Barr apparently was one of the first people in Trump’s orbit to tell the president that he believed the claims that the election was “stolen” were “bulls–t,” according to reports from others present in the room during a meeting between the two.
The meeting, which took place in December, also included Trump’s White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone and other White House aides. Cipollone was reportedly surprised at Barr’s blunt response to the situation, but it was also noted that he didn’t disagree with the former AG.
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As you’ll remember, Barr’s DOJ issued a statement in December that no substantial proof or evidence of widespread voter fraud had been presented to his department — a statement that did not sit well with a president who was 100 percent convinced otherwise.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr wrote in the statement, which prompted an immediate backlash not only from the president, but from top allies in Congress and millions of Trump’s supporters on social media, who immediately turned on Barr, accusing him of being part of the D.C. “Swamp.”
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Axios reported at the time that Trump confronted Barr over the statement in a White House dining room, holding nothing back as he hammered the then-AG over his statement.
“Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump,” the president reportedly said.
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Barr, being the straight-shooter that he always has been, fired back, telling the president that “the stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true,” which was likely a reference to bombshell claims made by Sidney Powell and others who claimed to have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
POLITICO: AG Barr stood behind a chair in the private dining room next to the Oval Office, looming over Donald Trump, who sat at the head of the table. It was Dec. 1. The president’s theories about a stolen election, Barr told Trump, were “bullshit.” He was gone in 3 weeks.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 18, 2021
Trump also sharply criticized Barr for not announcing that he was aware of a federal investigation into Hunter Biden and the controversy surrounding his potentially illegal “pay for play” scheme in which he allegedly sold access to his father in exchange for piles of money from various American adversaries and foreign nations.
The fallout from the statement was swift and just three weeks later, Barr had resigned from his position as Attorney General, nearly one month prior to President-elect Joe Biden taking office.
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