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Attorney General William Barr has resigned.
There wasn’t a two-week notice, no self-congratulatory news conference, no accomplishment laden press release; there was only a tweet. As the President has done so many times in his tenure, Donald Trump unceremoniously told the world of a cabinet member’s resignation via Twitter.
“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”
William Barr became Attorney General on February 14, 2019, taking over the helm from Jeff Sessions. Unlike his predecessor, Barr resigned before the president could start a career-destroying social media onslaught against him. As a staunch Trump loyalist, Barr had used the Department Of Justice to support the president’s most reckless whims. As a member of Trump’s inner circle, the powerful lawman made the ultimate mistake; he publicly disagreed with the President.
As Trump’s dream of reelection started to crumble after election day, Barr set out to appease his boss by starting an investigation into election fraud. This action reversed a longstanding department policy of not investigating election irregularities before results have been certified. The department’s election investigation was met with a swift rebuke from a bipartisan group of former Justice Department officials, The Advisory Board of the Voter Protection Program, who stated, “The voters decide the winner in an election, not the president, and not the attorney general.”
As with his false synopsis of The Mueller Report, his forceful clearing of Lafayette Square so Trump could take a photo, and his attempt to use the DOJ to defend the president in his sexual assault trial, Barr did not care about the optics and forged ahead with his election investigations. As Trump spread conspiracy theories, lost dozens of court cases, and continued his assault on democracy, Barr’s investigation continued. Without proof to support Trump’s outlandish statements, Barr told the Associated Press, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
According to insiders, Barr’s interview with the AP “infuriated” the president. On the day of the AP article’s release, Trump had an unscheduled meeting with his A.G. In the days following the meeting, the president refused to give a vote of confidence to Barr. The man who Trump once praised as “a man of unbelievable credibility and courage” was now persona non grata, and it became clear his time as head of the DOJ had run its course. Barr’s tumultuous tenure as A.G. was ended by the thing he tried to subvert since his appointment, the truth.
