Barr believed Trump’s claims of election fraud and rigged voting machines were ‘bull’

Former Attorney General William P. Barr believed President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud and rigged voting machines were “bull——” and their disagreement came to a head during a stormy White House meeting in December, according to an upcoming book.

Mr. Barr also told Mr. Trump that his legal team contesting the election results in several battleground states was a “clown show,” author and journalist Jonathan Karl wrote in a book excerpt that was published Sunday in The Atlantic.

“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Mr. Barr told Mr. Karl. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bull—-.”

Mr. Barr angered Mr. Trump by telling an Associated Press reporter on Dec. 1 that the Justice Department had not found evidence of voter fraud in the presidential election at a level significant enough to change the outcome of Mr. Trump’s loss to Democrat Joseph R. Biden.

The book excerpt says that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, had been privately urging Mr. Barr for weeks to go public with his view that Mr. Biden had won fairly.

The attorney general met with Mr. Trump and others at the White House just as the news story broke.

The red-faced president brought up the AP story with Mr. Barr, according to the account by Mr. Karl.

“Did you say that?” Mr. Trump asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Barr replied.

“How the f—- could you do this to me? Why did you say it?” Mr. Trump asked.

“Because it’s true,” Mr. Barr said.

Mr. Trump, who was described as “livid,” told his attorney general, “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”

Mr. Trump is persisting with his claims that Democrats stole the election in states such as Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania. At a campaign-style rally in Ohio on Saturday night, Mr. Trump reiterated his belief that the stolen election was “the crime of the century.”

According to Mr. Karl’s account, Mr. Trump questioned his attorney general during the White House meeting about boxes of ballots brought to a tabulation center in Detroit in the middle of the night, after polls had closed on Election Day. Mr. Barr told the author that he had already looked into the issue and found it to be routine.

“In every other county, they count the ballots at the precinct, but in Wayne County, they bring them into one central counting place,” Mr. Barr told Mr. Karl. “So the boxes are coming in all night. The fact that boxes are coming in — well, that’s what they do.”

Mr. Barr said he told the president: “It’s the only county with all the boxes going to a central place, and you actually did better there this time around than you did last time. You keep on saying that the Department of Justice is not looking at this stuff, and we are looking at it in a responsible way. But your people keep on shoveling this s—- out.”

Mr. Barr also said he looked into allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes. He received briefings from cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, Mr. Karl wrote.

“We realized from the beginning it was just bull——,” Mr. Barr said. “It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted. So you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”

During the Dec. 1 meeting, Mr. Barr also told the president that his legal team had essentially lost its chance to raise legal challenges after the election.

“This would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy,” Mr. Barr said he told the president. “Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”

Mr. Trump responded, “You may be right about that,” according to Mr. Karl, who is chief Washington correspondent for ABC News.

His book, “Betrayal,” is due out in November.