Former Attorney General Bill Barr said “the evidence is building” as the Justice Department investigates former President Donald Trump related to the events of Jan. 6, but he stopped short of saying charges are merited.
“I think definitely the evidence is building, but after the last set of hearings, I said, you know, personally, if this is what there is, as attorney general, I still don’t see that as a sufficient basis to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed by the president,” Barr said in a new interview with CBS News. “But I am sure what they are doing is getting deeper and deeper into it.”
CAPITOL RIOT CASES ARE BEHIND SPIKE IN DOJ DOMESTIC TERRORISM NUMBERS
He added: “I’ve said for a while that I thought his behavior was shameful on Jan. 6, and just on its merits people should understand it was very bad behavior. But whether it crossed the line to criminal behavior, from the Department of Justice’s standpoint, it is always can we prove criminal behaviors. In this case, it’ll really depend on his state of mind.”
Barr has repeatedly said there was no fraud in 2020 sufficient to change the outcome of the election, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has called the Capitol riot investigation “the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation” the Justice Department has ever conducted. Trump has denied wrongdoing.
The Trump attorney general said he thought Garland was trying to signal: “Look, I am looking hard at this, and if we find a crime, we will prosecute it.”
The Justice Department declined to charge former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows with a crime after the Democratic-led House called on the DOJ to prosecute him for alleged contempt of Congress. White House counsel Pat Cipollone reportedly received a grand jury subpoena through the Justice Department’s investigation recently.
Barr said the subpoena was “a significant event” and that “it changes my view of what’s been going on.” He said it had looked like DOJ “was really focusing on the lower level,” such as “the people who went into the Capitol.”
Barr said he “didn’t think they were paying that much attention to the higher-ups, and they were sort of leaving it to the congressional committee, but this suggests to me that they’re taking a hard look at the group at the top, including the president and the people immediately around him who were involved in this.”
The former attorney general was asked specifically about the Cipollone subpoena.
“I think that’s the most significant because he has the strongest claim to executive privilege as the counsel to the Office of the President,” Barr replied. “So that’s sort of the biggest mountain for them to climb, and the fact that they lead off with that to me suggests that they want a definitive resolution, not only on Cipollone, but, you know, this would affect Meadows and some of the other people, too.”
The Justice Department is reportedly beefing up its team investigating Jan. 6.
The DOJ said last week that more than 850 defendants had been arrested in relation to the Capitol riot, including over 260 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been hit with seditious conspiracy charges and have pleaded not guilty.
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The Democratic-led congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 highlighted testimony by Barr in June, where he said fraud claims pushed by Trump in 2020 were “bulls***” and contradicted claims made by Trump that the race was “stolen” and that President Joe Biden didn’t really win.
Trump responded on his Truth Social website by saying Barr is “weak and frightened” and calling 2020 a “RIGGED & STOLEN Election.”
