Former Attorney General Bill Barr has blasted the Trump-Russia probe, arguing that Robert Mueller was the “wrong person” to be appointed special counsel because he didn’t fully investigate the FBI.
In his new book, called “One Damn Thing After Another,” Barr is highly critical of the entire Mueller probe.
Mueller was appointed special counsel by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Barr says Mueller was the wrong man for the job because he did not look into why the probe started in the first place or whether the FBI was running its investigation based on Russian disinformation provided by Hillary Clinton-funded British spy Christopher Steele.
Barr writes: “I believe Rosenstein felt that the collusion allegations were probably baseless and that the best way for the administration to get beyond the wild scandalmongering was to appoint a prominent figure who could bring things to a conclusion quickly and credibly.
“But he never seemed to have stopped to examine whether there was an adequate basis for pursuing either a counterintelligence or criminal investigation.”
Barr writes about an FBI agent on Mueller’s team saying that “after Mueller came in, the office quickly developed a ‘Get Trump’ attitude and began with a preexisting conviction that there must be ‘something criminal.’”
Barr ripped Mueller’s “dunderheaded” decision to staff the office with mostly Democrats.
“The whole purpose of appointing Mueller was to assure the public that partisanship would not be involved in the investigation,” Barr wrote.
“Mueller defeated the very purpose of his appointment. His staffing decisions engendered deep distrust in half the country.
“Based on later information about the way the investigation was conducted, those fears were not wholly unjustified.”
“Even though Mueller was supposed to investigate Russian efforts to interfere in the election, he never seemed to have explored the possibility that Steele’s dossier was used as a vector for Russian disinformation,” Barr wrote.
Barr also has some choice words for Trump.
From CNN:
Former US Attorney General Bill Barr thinks former President Donald Trump “has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers” of a leader, according to excerpts of his forthcoming book obtained by The Washington Post.
“We need leaders not only capable of fighting and ‘punching,’ but also persuading and attracting — leaders who can frame, and advocate for, an uplifting vision of what it means to share in American citizenship,” Barr, who served as Trump’s second attorney general, wrote in the book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” according to the Post.
The comments from the onetime Trump loyalist come as the former President continues to hold considerable influence over the style and direction of the Republican Party, serving as its standard-bearer more than a year after leaving office.
According to the Post, Barr says in the book that the prospect of Trump running for president again was “dismaying.”
