Bill Barr was Donald Trump's attorney general and an effective protector and legal hatchetman for the former president while he was in office. But now he says that Trump is "nauseating" and predicts worse for his old boss as prosecutor Jack Smith pursues his indictments.
"I find it sort of nauseating that he claims to be a multi-billionaire while going out and raising money from hard working people, small doners, and tells them this is to defend America," he told CNN's Kaitlin Collins. "He didn't provide any sugnificant support in the 2020 elections and all this money is going to his legal fees."
He also said Trump would be lying if he claims his lawyers told him to do what he did:
"It would not come out very well for him" if Trump took the stand on that defense, Barr said. "I think he'd be subject to very skilled cross examination, and I doubt he remembers all the different versions of events he has given over the last few years."
Barr also cast doubt on whether Trump's aides had, in fact, told Trump he had lost the 2020 election unjustly.
All of the advisers who surrounded Trump, Barr claimed, had told him that the 2020 election "was not stolen by fraud." Even conservative attorney John Eastman — who Trump's legal team said pushed him to declare the election a fraud — gave such vague counsel to Trump that Barr said he was not sure he would characterize it as "advice."
Barr's been floated as an anti-Trump hero for a while. That whole process, where Trumpworld co-conspirators and outcasts work the media with an apologetic and exonerative truth-telling act, may be called Speerfishing after the trope codifier himself. (Speerphishing, with a ph, would emphasize the part where people think that that sensitive personal information has been revealed)
