[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: Attorney General William Barr, one of President Donald Trump’s staunch allies, resigns amid persistent tension with the president over the president’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and the investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son.
Barr went to the White House on Monday (December 14), where Trump said he presented his letter of resignation. “According to the letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,” Trump tweeted.
Trump has publicly expressed his anger at Barr’s statement to the Associated Press earlier this month that the Justice Department had not found any widespread election fraud that would change the outcome of the election.
Trump had long hoped that a Justice Department investigation into the alleged political roots of the Russia investigation would help him damage his Democratic opponent Joe Biden before Election Day.
When Barr made it clear that none of that was going to happen, Trump publicly enraged that he would be “very disappointed.”
He got angry at Barr again after the election, which Trump has tried to reverse, claiming without evidence that Biden only won by fraud.
Barr told the Associated Press that “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have had a different outcome in the election,” an assessment that put a big hole in the ongoing disinformation campaign Trump.
READ: US Electoral College Formally Confirms Joe Biden’s Victory Over Trump
Trump has also been angry that the Justice Department did not publicly announce that it was investigating Hunter Biden before the election, despite the department’s policy against such a pronouncement.
A senior White House official said “Barr resigned of his own free will. He was not expelled or forced to resign. It was a very friendly meeting.”
Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, was heavily criticized by Democrats for what they said was his unethical behavior to protect Trump during an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into the president’s connections to Russia.
“Bon voyage to the worst despicable and corrupt attorney general in American history,” House Democrat Bill Pascrell tweeted.
Trump announced that Assistant Attorney General Jeff Rosen, “a prominent person,” will take over from Barr as an actor.
Trump, who will leave office on January 20, already fired an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in 2018.
In that case, Sessions infuriated Trump by recusing himself in the Russia investigation, leading to Mueller’s appointment.
[ad_2]
