Former Attorney General William Barr didn’t rule out voting for former President Donald Trump in 2024 if he is the Republican Party’s nominee, despite his claims in a new book that Mr. Trump was “dangerous” before he left office.
“I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party,” Mr. Barr said on NBC’s “Today.” “It’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.”
But he told host Savannah Guthrie that he doesn’t believe Mr. Trump should be the party’s nominee.
“I’m going to … support somebody else for the nomination,” Mr. Barr said.
Mr. Barr’s book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is being released Tuesday. In it, he recounts his view that the 2020 election was not rigged and that he believed Mr. Trump was behaving in a dangerous manner by pushing his claims that the election was stolen from him.
“He was beyond restraint,” Mr. Barr writes.
SEE ALSO: Former AG William Barr taking heat from both parties for his new book about Trump
Mr. Trump slammed Mr. Barr in a letter to NBC News anchor Lester Holt over the weekend.
“I made many great appointments during my administration, and we accomplished more than most administrations could even dream of, but Bill Barr was not one of my better picks,” the former president wrote. “He crumbled under the pressure, and bowed to the Radical Left — and that is no[t] acceptable. Now he is groveling for the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve.”
In a statement last week, Mr. Trump said his former attorney general had failed to pursue obvious election fraud.
“Former Attorney General Bill Barr wouldn’t know voter fraud if it was staring him in the face — and it was,” Mr. Trump said.
On “Today,” Mr. Barr said the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol by Trump supporters during the certification of the Electoral College vote was shameful.
“I think that the aim was to pressure Congress and to pressure [then-Vice President Mike Pence],” Mr. Barr said. “Regardless of whether laws were broken, regardless of that, it was a shameful thing because one branch of government shouldn’t be trying to use a mob to pressure another branch of government.”
He said he underestimated the lengths to which Mr. Trump was willing to go to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory.
“I was surprised,” he said. “I mean, I thought it was a farce because there was no substance to it. There was no legal support for it.”
Mr. Barr also defended his handling of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russian election interference investigation, which found that the Trump campaign in 2016 did not collude with Moscow.
“It was a lie which the media pushed,” Mr. Barr said. “It was a feeding frenzy that hobbled the administration and was unfair to the president. And I dealt with it accordingly.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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