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Former Attorney General William Barr said President Donald Trump became furious when he called claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election “bulls–t” — an accusation that Trump responded to by calling Barr a “coward.”
“I told him that all this stuff was bulls–t … about election fraud. And, you know, it was wrong to be shoveling it out the way his team was,” Barr, who is promoting a new tell-all book, told NBC News’ Lester Holt in an excerpt of an interview that will air Sunday night.
At one point in the heated encounter, Barr said, he offered to quit, and Trump slammed his hand on his desk and said, “Accepted. Accepted.”
Barr said the encounter happened on Dec. 1, 2020, when Trump summoned him to the White House. Earlier that day, Barr had told the Associated Press that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Trump was in his private dining room when Barr arrived and quickly began grilling him about his election comments.
Barr said he told Trump that the Department of Justice had looked into the fraud claims and found no evidence to support the theories that the 45th president and others on his legal team were pressing.
“He was asking about different theories, and I had the answers. I was able to tell him, ‘This was wrong because of this,’” Barr recounted.
As Trump listened, Barr said, he could tell “he was obviously getting very angry about this.”
“I understand you’re upset with me. And I’m perfectly happy to tender my resignation,” Barr said he told Trump.
Suddenly, Trump slammed the desk with his hand and said, “Accepted. Accepted.”
“And then — boom. He slapped it again. ‘Accepted. Go home. Don’t go back to your office. Go home. You’re done,’” he said Trump fumed at him.
Trump, responding to NBC News, said he was the one who demanded Barr step down.
The former president said Barr’s recollection of that day was false and described his attorney general as “lazy” and a “coward.”
In his book “One Damn Thing After Another,” which will be published March 8, Barr recounts the meeting and writes that Trump asked him if he hated him, because his remarks were undermining his accusations.
“’This is killing me — killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,’” Trump told Barr, according to the book. “He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’”
Barr, who served in the administration from February 2019 to December 2020, said he reminded Trump that he had “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged,” but that the Justice Department could not back up his claims about the “big lie.”
The former AG said White House lawyers intervened after he announced his intention to step down, and Trump didn’t pursue it.
Barr officially resigned two weeks later on Dec. 14.
More excerpts of Holt’s interview with Barr will air on NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
Meanwhile, Trump responded Thursday to accusations by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that the former president and several others committed criminal conspiracy by trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
”The Unselect Committee’s sole goal is to try to prevent President Trump, who is leading by large margins in every poll, from running again for president, if I so choose. By so doing they are destroying democracy as we know it,” he said in a statement via email.
“Their lies and Marxist tactics against political opponents will not stop the truth, or the biggest political movement, Make America Great Again/America First, in the history of our Country,” he continued.
“And now we have a war waging in Ukraine that would have never happened, record-setting inflation, an embarrassingly poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan, and an economy that is teetering, at best. All because of a corrupt Election result,” Trump added.
The Democrat-controlled committee, which has been criticized for its partisan agenda and has no power to bring criminal charges, said the evidence shows Trump and his lawyers were spreading false information about the election as they pressed state election officials to overturn the results.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the panel wrote in a filing submitted in US District Court in the Central District of California.
With Post wires
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