Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Saturday said that he would back former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden in the 2024 election despite having said otherwise in previous interviews.
“I think getting control over the border, stopping the lawlessness in our cities, building up the strength of the United States in an ever, more dangerous world, [stopping] the avalanche of regulation that is strangling business and our technological superiority—these are critical things that have to be done, and I think that, we’ll get them done under a Trump administration.”
“At the same time, I think the Biden administration, it is, in fact, the greater threat to democracy,” Mr. Barr added. “I think, they they have a totalitarian temper, they have bought into the progressive movement, and they’re trying to squelch opposition and freedom of speech.”
However, Mr. Barr also said he’s “not happy with the choice,” characterizing it as a choice of “who will do the least harm to the country.”
Mr. Barr has been highly critical of his former boss. During the 2020 election, he did not endorse President Trump’s comments alleging fraud throughout the 2020 election before he resigned from office in December of that year.
Later, he cooperated with the Democrat-dominated House Jan. 6 subcommittee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, breach at the U.S. Capitol. He also has defended special counsel Jack Smith’s cases against the 45th president as legitimate. In public appearances, the former attorney general has been critical of President Trump and suggested he wouldn’t endorse him.
But last week, he was critical of the current “hush-money” case against President Trump, saying the charges are “obviously political” in nature. “The real threat to liberty, the real threat to our system, are the excesses of the progressive left,“ he said. ”They are perverting the system of justice and that’s where the danger lies. The corruption and subversion of our institutions by the left.”
In the Trump trial, opening arguments are scheduled for Monday after the judge swore in 12 jurors and six alternates after a week-long selection process.
Judge Juan Merchan said lawyers will present opening statements Monday morning before prosecutors begin laying out their case alleging a scheme to cover up negative stories President Trump feared would hurt his 2016 campaign. He has pleaded not guilty and says the allegations are false.
A Trump attorney was in an appeals court hours after the jury was seated, arguing that Judge Merchan rushed through jury selection and that Trump cannot get a fair trial in Manhattan. “To think an impartial jury could be found in that period of time, I would respectfully submit, is untenable,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert said last week.
The former president spent the week sitting quietly in the courtroom as lawyers pressed potential jurors on their views about him in a search for any bias that would preclude them from hearing the case. During breaks in the proceedings, he has criticized the case on social media or to TV cameras in the hallway, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
Mr. Barr, a lifelong Republican, was the U.S. attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush and was again tapped to be the attorney general by President Trump in 2019 and 2020.
Meanwhile, President Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee after his only remaining GOP challenger, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after her poor performance during the Super Tuesday contests. Amid the trial, the former president said that he should be campaigning in battleground states rather than sitting in a courtroom all day, as required by the judge.
