President Trump is planning to select former Attorney General William Barr to head the Justice Department, according to a new report.
Trump has shared his decision with advisers and plans to share the announcement next week, ABC News reports.
It was previously reported that Barr was Trump’s first choice to lead the agency and that Trump’s decision was expected in the next few days, sources familiar with discussions about it told the Washington Post.
Barr served as attorney general for nearly 14 months at the end of President George H.W. Bush’s administration, from 1991-93. Now with the Washington, D.C., law firm Kirkland & Ellis, Barr has said he would feel compelled to take the post out of duty, even though he held it previously.
Barr would bring knowledge and savvy about the Justice Department, and he is considered a strong manager.
“He’s a serious guy,” a source said. “The president is very, very focused on [a candidate] looking the part and having credentials consistent with the part.”
But no White House decision is final, and Barr declined to comment to the Washington Post.
During Barr’s tenure as attorney general, he worked with special counsel Robert Mueller, who was chief prosecutor for the Department of Justice criminal division at the time. Mueller is currently investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Just last year, Barr suggested that there was a greater basis to probe Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Uranium One deal than there was to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.
“To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” Barr said, according to the New York Times.
Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey — a move that Barr defended. Barr wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post in 2017 that the FBI’s announcement closing the investigation into Clinton’s unauthorized email server “crossed a line that is fundamental to the allocation of authority in the Justice Department.”
“With an investigation as sensitive as the one involving Clinton, the ultimate decision-making is reserved to the attorney general or, when the attorney general is recused, the deputy attorney general,” he wrote.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned last month at Trump’s request. Matthew Whitaker is now serving as acting attorney general.
Whitaker is under scrutiny by congressional Democrats over comments he made prior to joining the Justice Department critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race and potential Trump campaign collusion. Whitaker also faces several legal challenges about whether his appointment as acting attorney general is legal, since the post is supposed to be filled by another official confirmed by the Senate into their current role.
