Trump Excoriates Barr, McConnell in Late-Night Missive

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 28, 2021) — In a scathing and lengthy public statement issued late Sunday, 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump termed his second attorney general, William P. Barr, a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) who betrayed him on several fronts, including in the aftermath of the November 3, 2020 election in which Trump was declared the loser after initially leading in all six “swing” states and winning the bellwether states of Florida and Ohio.

“RINO former Attorney General Bill Barr failed to investigate election fraud, and really let down the American people,” Trump wrote on his “Save America” political website as posted on Twitter by spokeswoman Liz Harrington. “Even the scam that took place in Georgia of ballot stuffing on camera, he couldn’t see what was wrong with it. Just like he failed to understand the Horowitz report and let everyone down with respect to getting a timely investigation (where’s Durham?) on all of the corruption of the Obama-Biden Administration.”

Trump’s statement was in apparent response to an article published Sunday in The Atlantic by Jonathan Karl, also of ABC News, depicting Barr telling him over the last several months that “there was nothing there” regarding Trump’s claims of significant voter fraud.  In addition, Karl reported that according to Barr, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Barr to refute Trump’s claims ostensibly to help McConnell secure that Republicans held two Georgia Senate runoff seats which ultimately were lost to Democrats.

Having served in the 1990s as U.S. attorney general to then-President George W. Bush (41), Barr’s nomination and confirmation came after Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, resigned the day after the 2018 midterm elections. Trump had often voiced his displeasure with Sessions after he recused himself from a Justice Department investigation into allegations of “collusion” between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives to impact the outcome of the election.

In April 2019, following a report generated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors revealing no evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Barr appointed then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham to lead an investigation into the origins of narrative. To date, only one prosecution has taken place, although evidence has shown that the Democratic National committee (DNC) and 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, in tandem with some government employees — including high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials — were propagating the narrative with intent to affect the 2016 election.

Thus far, Durham has remained silent on the progress or outcome of the probe, of which he was designated “Special Counsel” by Barr shortly before Barr’s abrupt departure in late December 2020.

In the wake of citizens’ sworn affidavits and in-person testimony to their respective state legislatures during the presidential transition period attesting to significant ballot fraud, intimidation and the barring of certain observers from the counting process, Barr declared in a December 1 interview with the AP that the Justice Department saw no indication of “widespread voter fraud” in the election.

Karl’s article was released two days after the final phase of counting in a forensic election audit was completed in Maricopa County, AZ. Some have suggested that major findings will be revealed which might call into question the figures reported to and certified by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs showing Democrat Joe Biden winning the state’s 11 electoral votes.

The mainstream media quickly seized upon The Atlantic article, with CNN offering commentary adapted from the author’s upcoming book claiming Barr “bears as much responsibility as anybody other than Trump himself for spreading the malicious lie that ultimately resulted in the January 6 Capitol insurrection.”

“The malicious lie” is likely a reference to Trump’s claims that he won the election over Biden, whose light schedule and limited public appearances, marked by strange behavior, forgetfulness, and an inability to enunciate his words, have convinced many he is suffering from cognitive impairment.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll reported that “53% of Republicans view Trump as true U.S. president.”

In his Sunday statement, Trump referred to other states’ alleged efforts to “expose fraud” associated with the election. “If there was no fraud, why are Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other States spending so much time and effort on exposing the fraud?” he wrote, providing examples from news reports, public officials’ statements, and surveillance video from the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, GA, where election workers were seen taking boxes from underneath skirted tables after most workers were dismissed for the night, removing the contents and feeding them into voting machines.

A media report quoted Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s chief operations officer, Gabriel Sterling, as having claimed that the video “shows normal ballot processing” and directing readers to a left-leaning “fact-checking” website.

On June 14, the Georgia Star News reported that a Fulton County elections official, in response to an open records request, admitted the county could not produce all “transfer” sheets on absentee ballots deposited in drop-boxes widely used in the 2020 election as a result of the declared COVID-19 pandemic. The revelation prompted Raffensperger’s office to announce it would investigate and to admit it was aware of three other counties’ failure to maintain chain-of-custody documentation, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The forms provide a record of how many ballots were picked up at each drop box location,” wrote Mark Niesse on the same day. “Raffensperger’s office previously announced similar investigations of Coffee, Grady and Taylor counties, which didn’t complete ballot drop box transfer forms as required by State Election Board rules.”

Despite his apparent knowledge of election irregularities, Raffensperger certified the results for Biden, who reportedly won the Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by under 13,000 ballots. On June 18, Raffensperger announced he plans to purge almost 102,000 voters from the state’s registry based on official changes of address and undeliverable election mailings.

In response, Trump questioned why the removal of “obsolete and outdated” voters was not done prior to the November 3 election.

Interestingly, the original Georgia Star News report focusing on Fulton County does not appear on the first page of a Google search, and an article written by The Post & Email on Saturday whose link led to the article now directs incorrectly. At the time of this writing, the article is available at Georgia Star News sister site Tennessee Star News.

As for Barr’s reported claims to Karl that Trump’s assertions of fraud were without merit against the backdrop of his laudatory resignation letter, Trump wrote, “If he felt this way, why did Barr say he was ‘greatly honored’ and ‘proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people’ in the final letter he wrote to me? He said, ‘Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.’

“Now it was revealed that Barr was being pushed to tell lies about the election by Mitch McConnell, another beauty, who was worried about damaging the Republicans [sic] chances in the Georgia runoff. What really damaged the Senate Republicans was allowing their races to be rigged and stolen, and worse, the American people to no longer believe their vote matters because spineless RINOS like Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell did nothing.”

On Monday former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis recalled that Barr told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in September, quoting from a bipartisan study authored by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, that the widespread use of mail-in ballots is an invitation to fraud. In a vehement exchange with Blitzer, Barr asserted, “…It is open to fraud and coercion; the only time the narrative changed is after this administration came in, but elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion.”

On Monday, Harrington released a statement from Trump claiming that McConnell “never fought for the White House and blew it for the Country…Based on press reports, he convinced his buddy, Bill Barr, to get the corrupt (based on massive amounts of evidence that the Fake News refuses to mention!) election done, over with, and sealed for Biden, ASAP!”