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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General William Barr will resign next week, he said on Monday, shortly after the Electoral College confirmed President Donald Trump’s defeat to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.
Barr, who had angered Trump by failing to support his incorrect claims that the November 3 election result had been tainted by widespread fraud, said he would leave office on December 23, a little less than a month before have Biden take office on January 1. twenty.
Assistant Attorney General Jeff Rosen will take over as Acting Attorney General after Barr’s departure, Trump said.
“Our relationship has been very good, he has done an excellent job!” Trump said of Barr on Twitter.
A White House official told Reuters that Barr resigned of his own free will.
Trump lashed out at Barr on Twitter over the weekend after the Wall Street Journal reported that Barr learned earlier this year about an investigation into Biden’s son Hunter’s taxes.
Trump retweeted a comment from radio host Todd Starnes saying Barr should be fired for failing to reveal the investigation during the campaign. “A big disappointment!” Trump said in his tweet.
Barr’s fate in the final days of the Trump administration had been in question since he said earlier this month that a Justice Department investigation had found no signs of major election fraud, contradicting Trump’s claims.
Trump’s legal team accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper investigation into the allegations.
Barr’s resignation letter was published shortly after he informed the president of the Justice Department’s review of the Trump campaign’s allegations of voter fraud. In it, Barr vowed that the accusations would “go ahead.”
The White House official said Barr’s meeting with Trump was amicable.
In the letter, Barr also praised what he called Trump’s historic record, saying he had helped boost the economy, strengthen the military and curb illegal immigration.
“I am proud to have played a role in the many unprecedented successes and accomplishments it has made for the American people,” Barr wrote.
Biden beat Trump by 306-232 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that elects the president, as well as by more than 7 million votes in the popular vote.
Despite that, Trump has refused to budge and continues to promote his baseless allegations of voter fraud, which have been repeatedly dismissed by state and federal officials.
Trump has pursued a series of legal challenges in numerous states, but has failed to prevail in any of them.
Last week, the US Supreme Court rejected a risky lawsuit from Texas that was backed by Trump and several other states seeking to dismiss the results of votes in four states, dealing what is seen as the fatal blow in their search. to undo his electoral loss.
CORE TRUMP SUPPORTER
Barr has long been a staunch ally of Trump, drawing contempt from Democrats and many of the department’s own career prosecutors who have accused him of putting Trump’s personal interests before those of the country.
“William Barr was willing to comply with the president’s orders on all fronts but one. Barr refused to follow President Trump’s absurd claims of winning the election,” said the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Democratic House of Representatives. , Jerrold Nadler, in a statement.
“Whoever Joe Biden selects as the new Attorney General will have an enormous amount of work to do to repair the integrity of the Justice Department,” added Nadler.
Before the 2020 election, Barr repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that mail-in ballots could be subject to fraud, and also intervened in several high-profile criminal cases in ways that benefited Trump’s political allies, such as Michael. Flynn and Roger Stone.
In May 2019, Barr hired US Attorney John Durham to investigate Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials for possible crimes in connection with his early-stage investigation into whether the 2016 presidential campaign of Trump colluded with the Russian government.
On December 1, Barr revealed that he elevated Durham to the role of special counsel in October so that he could continue his criminal investigation, a move that will make it politically difficult for Biden to remove him from office until the investigation is complete.
Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now executive director of the progressive advocacy group Citizens for Accountability and Ethics, said Monday that Barr has “done tremendous damage to the Department of Justice and to the faith of the American people in our justice system. .
“It is beyond ironic that Barr appears to have been ousted for not having gone far enough to abuse his position for Trump’s benefit, however far he may have gone,” the Bookbinder statement said. “The reason may be ridiculous, but hey.”
(Information from Sarah N. Lynch, additional information from Eric Beech and Jeff Mason; edited by Scott Malone, Howard Goller, and Peter Cooney)
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