Bill Barr says Justice Department likely had 'pretty good evidence' before executing search warrant at Mar-a-Lago

• The Justice Department likely has "pretty good evidence" against Trump, Bill Barr said Friday.
• Barr, speaking to Fox News, pushed back on criticism that the Mar-a-Lago raid was "unprecedented."

The Department of Justice would not have executed a search warrant Mar-a-Lago unless they had already built a solid case that former President Donald Trump had broken laws related to classified information and the handling of national security secrets, former Attorney General Bill Barr speculated on Friday.

In an interview with Fox News, Barr pushed back on the argument that last month's raid on Trump's Florida resort crossed a line and that there were alternative means for the government to recover top-secret information being kept there.

The Aug. 8 search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago came after federal investigators determined that, contrary to assertions made by Trump's lawyers, the former president had held on to classified government documents that could, among other things, expose intelligence assets abroad.

"I personally think, for them to have taken things to the current point, they probably have pretty good evidence, but that's speculation," Barr said.

Trump, after initially claiming without evidence that the FBI could have "planted" documents at Mar-a-Lago, has insisted that he in fact had issued a blanket declassification order for all papers in his possession — an argument his lawyers did not make in previous interactions with the government. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Barr said he was unimpressed with that argument, which, even if true, would still expose Trump and associates to criminal prosecution over the handling of national security secrets and obstruction of the investigation into his handling of such information after leaving the White House.

"I, frankly, am skeptical of this claim that, 'I declassified everything,' because, frankly, I think it is highly improbable," Barr said. "And, second, if in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and then said, 'I hereby declassify everything in here' — that would be such an abuse and such recklessness that it's almost worse than taking the documents."

The Justice Department, Barr continued, had also tried for months to recover the classified information at Mar-a-Lago, determining only after a June meeting with Trump's lawyers that the former president had not in fact returned all the documents at issue.

"I think the driver on this from the beginning was, you know, loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago," Barr said. "People say this was 'unprecedented.' Well, it's also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, okay? And how long is the government going to try to get that back?"

"The facts," Barr continued, "are starting to show they were being jerked around."