Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Trump 'orchestrating a mob' to storm the Capitol was a 'betrayal of his office'

• Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Thursday that President Trump inciting a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill on Wednesday was a "betrayal of his office and supporters."
• "Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable," Barr said in a statement to the Associated Press.
• The president's supporters converged on Washington, DC on Wednesday to attend a "March for Trump" rally in which the president spun nonsense conspiracy theories and urged his backers to march to the Capitol.
• Shortly after, as Congress was counting states' electoral votes to finalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory, throngs of violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists breached the Capitol and forced both houses to go into recess.

Former Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that President Donald Trump inciting a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill the previous day was a "betrayal of his office and supporters."

In a statement to the Associated Press, Barr said "orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable."

The president headlined a "March for Trump" rally on Wednesday where he continued spinning nonsense conspiracy theories about voter fraud, election-rigging, and faulty voting machines and claimed Democrats "stole" the election from him. Trump also urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was convening to count up the electoral votes in the 2020 election and finalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the race.

After the Trump rally, thousands of his supporters marched to the Capitol, breached barriers; clashed with law enforcement officials; stole and vandalized property; ransacked lawmakers' offices; and forced both the House and Senate to go into recess. Vice President Mike Pence and senior members of Congress were immediately evacuated, while other lawmakers, Hill staffers, and reporters were told to shelter in place and hide behind makeshift barricades before being evacuated as rioters occupied the building.

Photos showed Trump supporters waving Confederate flags in the nation's capital; members of the far-right Proud Boys group wearing clothing with genocidal undertones; and a noose erected outside the Capitol building.

After a six-hour period during which the rioters swarmed the area, law enforcement authorities were able to finally secure the building and Congress reconvened to finish counting the electoral votes and resolving Republican objections to Arizona and Pennsylvania's slate of electors.

Barr is the latest in a string of current and former Trump administration officials who have spoken out against Wednesday's violence, which the president still refuses to condemn, though he put out a statement early Thursday committing to an orderly transfer of power.

Confirmed as attorney general in January 2019, Barr left his post in late December after months of tensions with the president over his inability to deliver on politically motivated investigations the president wanted, and his public confirmation that the Justice Department had no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a statement that flew in the face of Trump's conspiracies.

Barr also incited the president's fury when he said last month that he didn't see a need to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump's election fraud claims, or Biden's son, Hunter, who is currently under criminal investigation by the Justice Department over his financial dealings.

In the same press conference, Barr also said he saw "no basis" for the federal government to seize and examine voting machines, an idea reportedly floated by Trump-supporting lawyer Sidney Powell.

Since Wednesday's chaos at the Capitol, multiple Trump administration officials have resigned, including the former White House press secretary and First Lady Melania Trump's chief of staff Stephanie Grisham; the deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews; deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger; the White House social secretary Rickie Niceta; the US's special envoy to Northern Ireland and former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; and other officials from the Commerce Department and National Security Council.

Chad Wolf, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, also condemned the violence, saying in a statement that "we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends. These violent actions are unconscionable, and I implore the President and all elected officials to strongly condemn the violence that took place yesterday."

Shortly after his statement was released, the White House announced that Trump had withdrawn Wolf's nomination to be permanent DHS secretary.

Media reports have also said that members of Trump's cabinet and their staff are in the early stages of discussing whether to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the president from power. On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent Pence a letter urging him to back the move, and on Thursday, several other Democratic lawmakers and Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger joined the push.