Al Drago | Reuters William Barr, who was former President Donald Trump’s attorney general until the final months of his administration, appeared Friday to defend the Justice Department’s decision to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and seize thousands of files. “I think the driver in this from the beginning was a lot of classified information sitting at Mar-A-Lago,” Barr said in an interview with Fox News. “People are saying this was unprecedented, well, it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put it in a country club, okay?” Barr said. “How long has the government been trying to get it back?” Barr continued. “They jawed for a year, they were deceived about the voluntary actions that were taken, then they went and got a subpoena, they were deceived about it, they feel.” “Events are starting to show that they were being pulled over, so how long are they waiting?” Barr added. The former DOJ chief’s remarks came as court documents revealed more information about the agency’s criminal investigation into sending classified government records to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House. FBI agents found four dozen empty document folders marked “TRAVELED” during their raid last month at Trump’s club, a newly unsealed court file revealed earlier Friday. Forty-three of those files were collected from Trump’s office, the court filing said. The Aug. 8 raid came months after the National Archives recovered 15 boxes of materials from Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida resort in January. FBI agents went to Mar-a-Lago in June to collect all the additional classified files. But the FBI later “uncovered multiple sources of evidence” indicating more classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, prompting them to seek a warrant to search the facility, according to a DOJ court filing. Barr said Friday that the search warrant suggests that “for things to have gotten to where they are today they probably have pretty good evidence, but that’s speculation.” Barr also disputed Trump’s claims that he declassified documents obtained from Mar-a-Lago, calling it “highly unlikely.” But if Trump did “stand over a bunch of boxes, not really knowing what was in there and say, I’m declassifying anything in here that would be such an abuse and that shows such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents,” said Bar. . Barr was sworn in as Trump’s attorney general in February 2019. He oversaw the controversial public release of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference and possible coordination with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. Critics accused him of misrepresenting the findings. of the Mueller report when a four-page summary of it was released weeks before the full report. Less than a month after Trump lost to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Barr publicly broke with his boss undermining his false claims that the race was rigged through widespread fraud. Trump has argued that the race was rigged against him, even after he leaves office on January 20, 2021. Just this week, Trump called for either the “rightful winner” to be declared or an “immediate” election. Barr, in an interview published on December 1, 2020, told The Associated Press that the Justice Department “has not seen fraud on a scale that could have had a different outcome in the election.” Trump announced Barr’s resignation two weeks later.
