Bill Barr delivering his attacks on Trump directly to Fox viewers — even if his motives are sketchy: columnist

William Barr has become the latest former Donald Trump official to publicly break with the former president after leaving office.

The former attorney general helped Trump gather power and escape accountability in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, but he has strongly disputed the former president's defenses after highly classified documents were seized from Mar-A-Lago -- and Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake is skeptical of his motives but appreciative of the effort.

"This is the guy, according to a judge’s finding, who misled about and spun the Russia investigation in a way that accrued significantly to Trump’s benefit," Blake wrote. "This is the guy who took an extraordinarily broad view of presidential power, but even he is now saying a president can’t do that."

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There's a long track record of former Trump officials speaking out after leaving their government posts, but Blake said Barr's carried weight due to his own reputation as a conservative and loyal service in the administration, and he's taking his concerns directly to the audience who most needs to hear them.

"He might have an agenda — specifically, preventing the GOP from nominating a former president he doesn’t want at the top of the ticket in 2024," Blake wrote. "But he’s providing some of the most significant rebuttals of the idea that Trump’s retaining these documents is a nothingburger and that the FBI search was overzealous. And he’s also, importantly, doing so on Fox News."