President Donald Trump announced Monday that Attorney General William Barr will step down from the administration before Christmas.
Barr, the head of the judiciary, was widely expected to step down just minutes after the election victory of President Joe Biden against Trump was formalized by the Electoral College. By the time Trump took office at the White House, the shake-up had been the subject of weeks of public conflict between the bar and the president.
Trump, who refuses to accept the bet for Biden, shared his resignation letter on Twitter announcing Bar’s decision.
“There was a good meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House,” Trump said in a couple tweets. “Our relationship was great and he did a great job!”
Trump tweeted that Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen would serve as acting attorney general following Barr’s departure. Richard Donoku, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, wrote that Trump would accept Rosen’s role as the No. 2 official in the judiciary.
Barr was directly outspoken in early December when the judiciary revealed that there was no evidence of large-scale voter or electoral fraud that could undermine the planned victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Biden refused to admit, falsely claiming that he had won the election, citing unproven fraudulent conspiracies and insisting that the race was “fraud” against him.
The bar also sought the legal efforts of lawyers in the Trump campaign to reverse Biden’s success in states on the main swing.
The law committee, led by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has filed a series of lawsuits seeking to invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes, focusing specifically on the Democrats’ heavily leaning districts in the presidential election. Many of the long-running lawsuits have already been dismissed, and so far no one was able to send in the perfect solution, which is not strange.
Giuliani and another Trump campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis, withdrew after making public what Barr said.
“With due respect to the Attorney General, there is no resemblance to a judicial inquiry,” Giuliani and Ellis said in a joint statement released by the Trump campaign.
“Again, with the utmost respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears without any knowledge or investigation of substantial malpractice and evidence of systematic fraud,” the statement said.
In late December, Trump expressed frustration with the judiciary for refusing to hold a public hearing involving Fiden’s son Hunter Fiden before the election.
The Wall Street Journal reports that despite pressure from Trump and Republicans to seek information about the Democratic nominee’s son, Barr has worked to cover up Hunter Biden’s business dealings and financial dealings during election periods.
On December 11, Trump tweeted, “Why didn’t the fake media, the FBI and the DJ report the Biden affair before the election?”
He falsely added: “Oh, that’s okay, we won the election anyway – 75,000,000 votes !!!”
Bar’s expulsion deepens the ongoing leadership crisis in the judiciary. The Attorney General faced harsh criticism that he had politicized the department, including current and former DOJ officials.
Bar raised hawks through his interventions in several high-profile federal lawsuits involving Trump allies.
Barr offered to reduce the proposed sentence after federal prosecutors recommended a harsher prison sentence for Trump’s friend, GOP operator Roger Stone, who was convicted of seven counts of lying to Congress. Four of the federal prosecutors in Stone’s case were soon prosecuted. In July, Trump reversed Stone’s sentence, preventing him from entering prison.
He was subjected to a bar investigation into his handling of a report by former Special Adviser Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the dismissal of Jeffrey Berman, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
At times, however, Barr publicly backed Trump. In an interview, Barr complained that some of the president’s tweets about current cases failed to do his job.
A recent embarrassment over the transfer of a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan was an embarrassing mix.
In June, Barr announced that Berman would step down and be replaced by Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Berman, who is said to be investigating Trump ‘s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, opened fire a few hours later, claiming that he had not resigned and that the person had received Senate confirmation that he would not resign until Trump formally appointed someone.
Berman eventually resigned after Barr’s vice-president Audrey Strauss told Barr that he would change himself on an acting basis.
The end of Bar’s tenure marked the end of Trump’s relationship with his attorney general, an alliance that Trump once regarded as one of the strongest nations he had with any member of his cabinet.
Bar’s role in the Trump administration, which he accepted in 2019, marked his second position as the country’s highest law enforcement officer. He also served as Attorney General under President George HW Bush in the 1990s.