- Former Attorney General William Barr said Sunday he believes Donald Trump deserves to be prosecuted.
- Barr told CBS that his former boss's handling of classified documents was "indefensible."
Up until the 2020 election, former Attorney General William Barr was seen as the epitome of a Republican loyalist, one who "distorted" the findings of Robert Mueller's Russia probe, in the words of one federal judge, and who spent the lead-up to the presidential vote casting doubt on the integrity of mail-in ballots.
But in an appearance Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," Barr — who rejected former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud before resigning from office in December 2020 — accused his former boss and the Republican frontrunner of being a "consummate narcissist" and a "troubled man" who deserves to be prosecuted for allegedly mishandling classified information.
"This is not a circumstance where he's the victim or that this is government overreach," Barr said of this month's 37-count federal indictment accusing Trump of taking classified national defense information from the White House and lying to federal officials who tried to get it back.
"He provoked this whole problem himself," Barr said, adding that while he believed Trump had been subject to "witch hunts" before, that "doesn't obviate the fact that he's also a fundamentally flawed person who engages in reckless conduct, and that leads to situations — calamitous situations like this — which are very destructive and hurt any political cause he's associated with."
Barr said he believes that Trump lied to the Department of Justice when he had his lawyers claim that he had returned all classified documents. He called it "indefensible" behavior, which he argued has resulted in a deserved prosecution.
Barr rejected the argument from some Republicans that Trump is being unfairly subjected to a double standard because Hillary Clinton was herself not prosecuted for using a private email server while Secretary of State. A 2018 review by the Department of Justice's inspector general determined that the prosecutors rightly decided not to charge Clinton with a crime based on available evidence, not undue political influence.
"That's not unfair to Trump," Barr said, "because this is not a case where Trump is innocent and being unfairly hounded. He committed the crime, or if he did commit the crime, it's not unfair to hold them to that standard."
Aside from the question of whether Trump should be prosecuted, Barr said Republicans should be asking themselves whether they should nominate a man who is accused of sharing national defense secrets with unauthorized individuals.
"Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world, who is engaged in this kind of conduct?" Barr asked, arguing that the classified documents case is "not just an isolated example."
"He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country's interest, there's no question about it," Barr said. "This is a perfect example of that."
Barr was not the only former Trump official to blast their former employer on Sunday.
Mark Esper, who served as Secretary of Defense from 2019 to 2020, told CNN's "State of the Union" that the allegations concerning Trump's handling of classified information are "very troubling," noting that some of the documents outline US defense plans and a proposed military attack on Iran.
If what is laid out in the federal indictment proves true, Esper said, then Trump should never be trusted with classified information again.
"It's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk," Esper said.
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