Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who served in President-elect Trump’s first administration, is urging state and federal prosecutors to drop the pending legal cases against Trump before he assumes office again. Barr told Fox News Digital that voters were fully aware of the allegations against Trump when they elected him for a second term on Tuesday, and he believes it would be in the country’s best interest for prosecutors to heed this public sentiment.
“The American people have rendered their verdict on President Trump and decisively chosen him to lead the country for the next four years,” Barr said. “They did that with full knowledge of the claims against him by prosecutors around the country and I think Attorney General Garland and the state prosecutors should respect the people’s decision and dismiss the cases against President Trump now.” Barr also argued that the legal theories in some of the cases already had been “greatly weakened by a series of court decisions,” and that the matters “have now been extensively aired and rejected by the American people.”
Once Trump takes office in January, Barr noted that prosecutors will be unable to pursue the cases during his term. A Trump-appointed attorney general could terminate the federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith: one in Washington, D.C., related to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and another in Florida concerning allegations of retaining classified documents after his first term. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Florida case on technical grounds related to Smith’s appointment.
In contrast, the Washington case faced setbacks due to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirming that presidents have immunity from prosecution for certain official actions. “We got immunity at the Supreme Court,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt last month. “It’s so easy. I would fire [Smith] within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed.”
However, Trump would be unable to halt state cases filed against him in New York and Georgia. One of these is a pending state criminal case in Georgia related to alleged efforts to overturn that state’s results in the 2020 election. Additionally, he has been convicted in a New York criminal case for falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, with a sentencing hearing scheduled for later this month.
But Barr addressed those cases, too, saying that local prosecutors and judges need to move on from the spectacle of prosecuting a soon-to-be sitting president. “Further maneuvering on these cases in the weeks ahead would serve no legitimate purpose and only distract the country and the incoming administration from the task at hand,” he said. “The public interest now demands that the country unite and focus on the challenges we face at home and abroad. Attorney General Garland and all the state prosecutors should do the right thing and help the country move forward by dismissing the cases.”
This includes the New York criminal case in which Trump was found guilty but has not yet been sentenced. Barr urged state prosecutors to dismiss the case, despite the conviction already being secured. “That case is rife with legal abuse and error,” Barr said. “If it were continued to be litigated it would ultimately be overturned, but we shouldn’t put up with that kind of distraction. And I think the right thing to do would be for the prosecutors to dismiss the case.” Asked what he thought the chances of that happening were, Barr was direct: “We’ll see what they think of democracy.”
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