Rudy Giuliani says former Attorney General William Barr holds blame for the violent U.S. Capitol riot.
A day after Barr insisted that questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election “precipitated” the siege of Congress earlier this month, Giuliani argued that a failure to investigate claims of widespread voter fraud adequately is what really fed into the unrest.
“The real cause of the violence, I think, if you want something other than antifa, is Bill Barr not investigating,” Giuliani said to Steve Bannon on his War Room show Tuesday. “If the people are angry, they are angry that these crimes have gone unredressed, and we’ve gone two years with crimes unredressed,” he added before bringing up issues such as Hunter Biden’s laptop. Earlier in the show, Giuliani said what Barr did was “treacherous.”
Giuliani, who is President Trump’s personal lawyer, has been central to making claims casting doubt about the legitimacy of the election, which President-elect Joe Biden won. To this day, he insists there was widespread fraud despite election authorities and the courts broadly rejecting the claims. Law enforcement officials also say there is no evidence of antifa involvement in the Capitol attack, even as Giuliani and others point fingers at John Sullivan, one left-wing activist out of many other people who have been charged in connection to the siege.
Barr left the attorney general role last month, but not before he rankled Trump by declaring that he had not seen evidence of fraud that would overturn the outcome of the election. According to an Axios report on Monday, Barr told Trump on Dec. 1 that the major election fraud allegations leveled by Trump allies were “just bulls—” and said that Trump’s legal team, apparently referring to people such as Giuliani, was “clownish.”
Trump was impeached by the House last week on a charge of incitement of insurrection after he encouraged his supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally to march on the Capitol before rioters broke into the building, disrupting lawmakers as they counted electoral votes. Several people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, died amid the mayhem.
“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable,” Barr said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner after the breach. “The President’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”
Trump, who called his second impeachment a “hoax,” still faces a Senate trial, even as he is set to leave office on Wednesday. Giuliani says he won’t represent Trump at the trial because he is a witness due to his speech at the same “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. At that event, Giuliani talked about making the case that there was rampant election fraud, saying: “If we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat.”
