Bill Barr's resignation letter heaps praise on Trump despite reports that the president was increasingly displeased with him
REUTERS/Tom Brenner
- US Attorney General William Barr is stepping down on December 23, according to a resignation letter tweeted out by outgoing President Donald Trump.
- "Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family," Trump said.
- The news comes after Barr, an otherwise loyal functionary, disputed Trump's assertion that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
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US Attorney General William Barr is stepping down just before Christmas "to spend the holidays with his family," President Donald Trump tweeted on Monday.
Attached to the tweet was a copy of Barr's resignation letter. In the December 14 resignation letter, Barr engages in four lengthy paragraphs praising Trump, including a nod toward an ongoing investigation into voter fraud, before getting to the single-sentence news: "As discussed, I will spend the next week wrapping up a few remaining matters important to the administration and depart on December 23rd."
Barr then wishes the Trump family a "Merry Christmas and a Blessed Holiday Season."
Barr had long been a loyal soldier for the president. In 2019, for example, he issued a summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that suggested that Trump had been exonerated from claims he and his campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election.
A US judge later declared that summary "distorted" and "misleading," saying it caused one "to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump."
Ahead of the 2020 election, Barr also baselessly asserted that mail-in ballots could be subject to foreign meddling, falsely stating that mail-based elections have been subject to "substantial fraud and coercion." He also ordered the top US prosecutor in Pittsburgh, Scott W. Brady, "to accept and vet any information" provided him on the Biden family by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, The New York Times reported last week.
While the White House claims Barr "resigned on his own accord," according to NBC News reporter Monica Alba, there were reports that the relationship between Trump and Barr was souring.
Earlier this month, Barr admitted that there is no evidence of serious fraud in the 2020 vote, much less anything that "could have effected a different outcome in the election."
That interview was followed by a lengthy and "intense" meeting with the president on December 2, ABC News reported.
A recent Wall Street Journal report also revealed that Barr was aware Hunter Biden, president-elect Joe Biden's son, was the subject of federal tax investigations, but per DOJ protocol worked to keep the investigation under wraps as not to influence the election. Earlier this month, Hunter Biden revealed that he was the
The new acting US attorney general will be Barr's current deputy, Jeff Rosen, Trump said.
Before joining the Department of Justice in 2019, Rosen served as deputy secretary of transportation under the Trump administration.
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