Ex-prosecutor details questions investigators will have for Bill Barr about Trump's election overthrow attempt
It was revealed this week that former Attorney General Bill Barr is cooperating with the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade explained that Barr was in a position to observe a lot of what was going on between former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department.
"You know, it's always been a little bit of a mystery as to why he left his position in mid-December of 2020," she recalled, talking about Barr's abrupt resignation with the claim that he wanted to spend Christmas with his family. "Most often, you'll see an attorney general stay around until after the inauguration, and at that point, you'll see the deputy continue to serve in an acting capacity. For him to leave one month short of the expected term was very unusual. We know that they had some differences of opinion after William Barr publicly stated there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It seems to me he's likely in the center of many conversations about the executive order, about [Trump's] efforts at the Justice Department — 'say there was fraud and let me do the rest.' I can see why Committee Chairman [Rep. Bennie] Thompson (D-MS) is interested in seeing what Barr has to say."
The conversation then turned to a draft of an executive order that Trump's office penned that would have directed the Pentagon to seize all electronic voting machines.
"What I would be looking for is ways to figure out, was there a conspiracy?" said McQuade. "Were these guys sort of spitballing and exploring what they thought were legal theories or working before, during, and after Jan. 6 to try to maintain power even though they knew it was fraudulent? We now know that none of these claims of fraud had any evidence whatsoever. So, what was going on there? Was this, the charge I would be looking at, was this conspiracy to defraud the United States, and that is an agreement by two or more people to obstruct the lawful execution of the laws of the United States? And if that's what's going on here, I think William Barr can provide a piece of information that could be helpful to the committee in determining whether laws need to fill those gaps, but as a prosecutor, whether laws were broken."
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