Former Attorney General William Barr is taking fire from the left and the right over his upcoming book about his turbulent tenure in the Trump administration.
In his book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” Mr. Barr recounts his view that the 2020 election was not rigged, as Mr. Trump still contends. He writes that Mr. Trump could have won reelection if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”
“The election was not ‘stolen,’” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.”
He is also urging the Republican Party to move on from Mr. Trump and his “erratic personal behavior,” and explore new leaders for the party.
Mr. Barr says that the former president has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”
As Mr. Barr makes the rounds of TV interviews to promote the soon-to-be-released book, people in both parties are rejecting his message. Democrats and the liberal media are blaming him for not speaking out against Mr. Trump while he was in office. Some Republicans portray him as a turncoat who is cashing in on his government service.
Mr. Trump, who accepted Mr. Barr’s resignation in a stormy Oval Office meeting about a month after the election, made it clear that he views his former Cabinet official as weak and lazy.
“Bill Barr was a disappointment in every sense of the word,” Mr. Trump has said. “Instead of doing his job, he did the opposite and told people within the Justice Department not to investigate the election.”
Rep. Ted Lieu, California Democrat, said Mr. Barr failed to aid Democrats’ impeachment of Mr. Trump “so that he could later write a book and profit from it. He should be ashamed for withholding information in order to make money off a tragedy.”
The book is set for release on Tuesday by the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins.
Mr. Barr, who served briefly as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, returned to lead the Justice Department in February 2019 after Mr. Trump ousted Jeff Sessions from the post. Democrats accused Mr. Barr of protecting Mr. Trump, particularly in his handling of the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and the dismissal of a criminal case against former Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Predictably our motion to dismiss the charges led to an election-year media onslaught, flogging the old theme that I was doing this as a favor to Trump,” Mr. Barr writes in the book. “But I concluded the handling of the Flynn matter by the FBI had been an abuse of power that no responsible AG could let stand.”
The final clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr came on Dec. 1, 2020, when the attorney general gave an interview to The Associated Press saying there was no widespread fraud in the presidential election. Shortly after his comments became public, Mr. Barr attended a meeting in the Oval Office with the president and others.
In his book, Mr. Barr says that Mr. Trump criticized him for what he viewed as a slow-developing probe of the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation, and his refusal to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey for sharing memos about his interactions with the president.
Mr. Barr offered to resign at the meeting.
“Accepted!” Mr. Trump shouted, banging his hand on a table, Mr. Barr writes. “Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!”
White House advisers convinced the president to change his mind, but Mr. Barr did leave his post before Mr. Trump’s term ended.
Mr. Barr also accuses Mr. Trump of encouraging the attack on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying the Electoral College results of President Biden’s victory.
“The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Barr writes.
