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United States Attorney General William Barr will resign on December 23, a month before his term ends and President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20.
Barr’s departure was announced by President Trump on Twitter, minutes after the state of California confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the November 3 presidential election, with the votes of his representatives in the Electoral College.
“I just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General William Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been very good and he has done an extraordinary job, “said Trump, pointing out as reasons for leaving Barr himself exposed in the letter he sent:” Barr is leaving just before Christmas to spend the season with the family. “
William Barr’s place will be taken on an interim basis by Assistant Attorney General Jeff Rosen.
Cooled ratio
In a letter praising President Trump’s work well beyond the areas of justice portfolio, the attorney general walks away from the White House in a seemingly friendly manner.
But the relationship between Trump and Barr has worsened in recent months, with the US president suggesting that the attorney general was also part of a plan to undermine him in the election against Joe Biden. In particular, Trump blamed Barr for not announcing the opening of investigations into Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, before the Nov.3 election.
Before that, Barr had dismissed Trump’s election fraud complaints, saying the Justice Department had no evidence of fraud on a scale that deprived Biden of legitimacy.
Since last week there has been talk of the departure of William Barr early. According to American newspapers, Barr began considering leaving after the November 3 presidential election.
Investigations on Russia
William Barr was appointed attorney general (attorney general, a mix of Attorney General and Attorney General) by Trump in early 2019, following the resignation of Jeff Sessions.
Sessions, a former Alabama senator who was an early supporter of Trump’s run for the White House in the summer of 2015, fell from grace in the US president’s circle in the early months of 2017.
At the time, the then attorney general turned over oversight of investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, and was attacked by Trump. After months of public humiliation, with the President of the United States repeatedly saying he regretted having appointed him, Jeff Sessions resigned in November 2018.
The current attorney general was appointed to replace Sessions because of his opposition to investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. Furthermore, William Barr was, for a long time, one of the biggest advocates . the thesis that US presidents have almost total freedom to make decisions without being challenged by Congress and the courts.
The press conference in which he presented, according to his version, the main results of the Justice Department’s investigations into Russia in April 2018, was seen by critics as a whitewashing of the charges made in the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Days after the press conference, Mueller sent a letter to the Department of Justice leadership, where he accused the attorney general of “not fully understanding the context, nature and substance” of the report.
No evidence of fraud
The relationship between Barr and Trump continued until before the November 3 election, when the attorney general corroborated the US president’s accusations that the process could turn out to be fraudulent.
And on November 9, Barr authorized the Justice Department to use its resources to investigate Trump’s allegations of fraud, despite the government claiming that the elections had been the safest in history and without evidence. that the charges were more than unfounded complaints.
The relationship appears to have broken in early December, when William Barr took the initiative to speak to the Associated Press about the results of the investigations. By confirming that, aside from the usual problems, there was no evidence of widespread fraud jeopardizing Joe Biden’s victory, the attorney general found himself in a position similar to that of his predecessor.
Barr’s interview with the Associated Press came just days after Trump suggested, in an interview on Fox News, that the Justice Department itself and the FBI were involved in the alleged fraud.
And two weeks ago, the president of the United States again complained about the way his attorney general was handling the investigations. “He hasn’t done anything,” Trump said, adding that the Justice Department and the FBI “weren’t expecting him, which is disappointing.”
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