William Barr and Jared Kushner both referred to the Trump campaign's legal efforts to overturn the election as a 'clown show,' book says

• Both Attorney General Barr and Jared Kushner called Trump's legal team a "clown show," a book says.
• Competing factions in Trumpworld led to two separate legal teams working out of Georgia, it adds.
• Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, told a Georgia senator he "couldn't help" him, the book says.

Both Attorney General William Barr and White House advisor Jared Kushner referred to the Trump team's legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election led by Rudy Giuliani as a "clown show," according to the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book, "Frankly We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost."

The book, published on July 13, describes chaos and discord behind the scenes as people pushing conspiracy theories increasingly took the lead on President Donald Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election.

Two competing factions of legal teams led by top campaign advisor Justin Clark and Giuliani began publicly clashing over the Trump team's approach to post-election challenges.

According to Bender's book, the tension led to one exchange in which Clark called Giuliani "a f---ing a--hole" after Giuliani, on speakerphone, accused Clark of lying to Trump in saying that Georgia's election results needed to be certified before they could request a recount.

The animosity between Giuliani's and Clark's camps resulted in two separate legal teams, both representing the White House and working out of Georgia without communicating or coordinating their legal strategies, the book says.

When a member of one of the teams arrived in Georgia and announced their presence on behalf of the White House, Bender writes, another attorney responded: "Well, if you were from the White House I'd know, because I'm from the White House."

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Sen. David Perdue, who had begged the Trump team to spend more time campaigning in Georgia before the election and was forced into a runoff, went directly to Kushner to get the Trump campaign to stop pushing allegations of fraud that he feared would hurt GOP turnout in the runoffs, the book says. Kushner, according to the book, told Perdue he was out of luck.

"Once Donald put Rudy in charge, it guaranteed this was going to be a clown show," Kushner told Perdue, according to the book, adding: "I can't help you."

Both Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler ended up losing in the January 5 runoff election to Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, rising tensions between Barr and Trump spilled over into the open in the aftermath of the election when Barr refused to throw the weight of the Justice Department behind Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Barr, who had spent months promoting a conspiracy theory that foreign adversaries were going to flood the US election system with fake mail-in ballots, saw Trump's attempts to overturn the election as a bridge too far, the book says.

Trump had even considered replacing Barr as attorney general with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the book says. And as he became increasingly incensed with Barr's public statements to The Associated Press that the DOJ hadn't uncovered evidence of substantial fraud, Bender writes, he shouted, "I can't believe you haven't done anything!"

Barr, for his part, told Trump his claims of fraud were "bulls---" and he had a "clown show," rather than a real legal team, Bender writes.

The attorney general eventually resigned on December 14, the day before the Electoral College voted to affirm Biden's victory.

In the end, state and federal judges all the way up to the Supreme Court declined to hear or rejected 60 lawsuits filed by the Trump team and its allies.