Former Attorney General Bill Barr said this week that he believes the guilty verdict in the criminal case against former President Donald Trump will likely be overturned on appeal. The comments came from the former Trump administration official who has been particularly critical of Trump in the past.
“I said from the very start that this was an abomination,” he said. “And I actually was surprised that they went ahead with the case because there really was nothing there. There was no crime there and they never were able to really articulate it until after the defense rested its case.”
“So I thought the whole thing was a travesty. I wasn’t surprised by the verdict because the way the case was conducted, there was never really any discipline on trying to make the prosecutor establish what the elements of the crime were and what evidence he had to do it. It was just assumed from the beginning that there was some kind of Federal Election Campaign violation, which there wasn’t,” he said.
Barr said that there was a high chance that the case would be overruled because “there are just multiple errors and violations of constitutional rights.”
“This will be eventually overruled after the election. But what happens if there’s a close election and Biden squeaks through and then the case is overruled? Half the country is going to feel that this was a stolen election,” he said.
“And, you know, again, this is a grave injustice and disservice to the country,” Barr added.
I am genuinely concerned about a scenario in which a Trump conviction is jerry-rigged by the partisan DA & judge, which then plausibly tips a close election…*after* which the verdict is (quite likely) overturned on appeal. We are already in a pretty unhealthy place as a country. pic.twitter.com/AbVy7gVrFQ
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 29, 2024
Barr served as attorney general twice, first under former President George H.W. Bush and then under Trump. Despite a glowing recommendation from Trump upon entering office, Barr quit in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Since then, Barr has become one of the sharpest critics of the former president.
Despite this, Barr announced earlier this year that he would support Trump over President Joe Biden. He said that Biden was the “real threat to democracy.”
“It’s my duty to pick the person who I think would do the least damage to the country. And I think Trump would do less damage than Biden,” he said.
