Bill Barr Warns Donald Trump Should Be “Most Concerned” About The Classified Documents Case - Vanity Fair

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr speaks at a meeting of the Federalist Society on September 20 2022 in...

The ex-U.S. attorney general says the former president’s legal woes “sort of assures” that he will lose in 2024.

April 9, 2023

Former Donald Trump-picked Attorney General Bill Barr spoke candidly on Sunday about Trump’s 2024 run, his verbal attacks on the Manhattan judge, and his legal cases, saying the former president should be “most concerned about the documents case at Mar-a-Lago.”

“He had no claim to those documents–especially the classified documents. They belong to the government. I think he was jerking the government around,” Barr said on ABC’s “This Week” about the federal case into the classified documents found at Trump’s Florida estate.

Trump “unfortunately has a penchant for engaging in reckless and self-destructive behavior that brings these kinds of things on him. In many respects, he's his own worst enemy,” Barr added. “He’s dug himself a hole on the documents [case]...It doesn’t surprise me that he has all these legal problems. He was warned about them before he left office.”

Twitter content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Barr also criticized how Trump attacked Judge Juan Merchan. After the former president was charged with 34 felonies in the hush-money case, he called Merchan a “Trump-hating judge, with a Trump-hating wife and family, whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign—and a lot of it.”

“I don’t think it is appropriate or wise. The president notoriously lacks self-control and he frequently gets himself into trouble,” Barr said about Trump name-calling Judge Merchan. Barr was, however, critical of the Manhattan case, saying that he thought it lacked merit. “I think it is transparently an abuse of prosecutorial power to accomplish a political end. I think it is an unjust case. That’s not to say that every legal challenge that the president faces is unjustified. But this one especially is,” Barr said.

The former AG was equally critical of Trump’s 2024 presidential run. Barr said that while his base will likely rally around Trump as the criminal investigations are ongoing because they view this as “persecution,” Barr thinks that Trump’s legal woes will hinder him in the actual election: “As far as the general election is concerned, it will gravely weaken Trump. He's already, I think, a weak candidate that would lose, but I think this sort of assures it.”

Twitter content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Perhaps demonstrating the “self-destructive behavior” that Barr was describing, Trump wrote a rambly, all-caps holiday message on Truth Social: “HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING THOSE THAT DREAM ENDLESSLY OF DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF DREAMING ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE, THOSE THAT ARE SO INCOMPETENT THEY DON'T REALIZE THAT HAVING A BORDER AND POWERFUL WALL IS A GOOD THING, & HAVING VOTER I.D., ALL PAPER BALLOTS, & SAME DAY VOTING WILL QUICKLY END MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD, & TO ALL OF THOSE WEAK & PATHETIC RINOS [Republicans in Name Only], RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS, SOCIALISTS MARXISTS, & COMMUNISTS WHO ARE KILLING OUR NATION, REMEMBER, WE WILL BE BACK!"

This year’s Easter message from Trump seems like the perfect follow-up to last year’s, in which he lambasted New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was investigating the Trump Organization’s finances: “Happy Easter to failed gubernatorial candidate and racist Attorney General Letitia James. May she remain healthy despite the fact that she will continue to drive business out of New York while at the same time keeping crime, death, and destruction in New York.”