During a Monday morning hearing, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot played footage from past, private testimony to the panel by ex-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, and in this testimony, Barr absolutely tears into the false claims of systematic election fraud that Trump made after the election.
Discussing a report about supposed evidence of problems with Dominion-brand election machines that Trump provided him in the form of a copy, Barr said: “As he talked more and more about it, I sat there flipping through the report and looking through it. And to be frank, it looked very amateurish to me… I didn’t have the credentials of the people involved, but I didn’t see any real qualifications… And I was somewhat demoralized, because I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff… On the other hand, when I went into this, and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were… My opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud.” Watch Barr below or here:
“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were” — Barr on Trump’s state of mind after the election pic.twitter.com/P0Xkb4koOY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 13, 2022
Footage of Barr appears to potentially string his answers together, presumably editing out the questions to help with efficiency. In testimony also played by the riot committee this Monday, Barr discussed the aftermath of his post-2020 election revelation to the Associated Press that there was no evidence of the kind of systematic fraud Trump claimed was responsible for Biden’s win. Unsurprisingly, Trump apparently flipped out. “The president was as mad as I’ve ever seen him, and he was trying to control himself,” Barr explained. “The president said, ‘Well, this is killing me. You didn’t have to say this. You must have said this because you hate Trump. You hate Trump.’… I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit. I mean that the claims of fraud were bullshit. He was indignant about that.” Barr also referred to claims about voting machines being supposedly compromised as “crazy stuff” on which he said the Trump team was “wasting” time. Check out those comments below:
Bill Barr on Oval Office meeting with President Trump: "The president was as mad as I've ever seen him and he was trying to control himself. The president said, 'This is killing me. You must have said this because you hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You hate Trump.'" pic.twitter.com/SeXoN31WbN
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 13, 2022
Trump previously responded to testimony from Barr played at earlier proceedings of the committee. “Bill Barr was a weak and frightened Attorney General who was always being “played” and threatened by the Democrats and was scared stiff of being Impeached,” Trump complained on his social media site, Truth Social. (If Barr was so terrible, it’s worth noting it’s Donald who nominated him.) Testimony from Ivanka Trump that the committee also played revealed she took Barr’s attestations about the security of the election seriously… and Donald also dismissed Ivanka’s stance. “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results,” Donald claimed last week. “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).” The committee has also featured footage of testimony from Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband and Donald’s son-in-law. And this Monday, they revealed attestations from Trump allies Jason Miller and Bill Stepien that Rudy Giuliani was apparently drunk on Election Night while putting forward ideas for what Trump should do.
