Trump officials wanted to release statement saying Bill Barr 'should be fired' if he kept refuting voter fraud: report

According to CNN, transcripts released by the House January 6 Select Committee show that the outgoing Trump administration considered releasing a statement attacking Attorney General William Barr for his ongoing refusal to endorse election fraud conspiracy theories — and threaten his termination if he didn't fall in line.

The statement didn't explicitly mention Barr by name — but would have been timed specifically to make clear to whom it was referring.

"The draft statement ended with, 'Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in 2020 election should be fired,' according to the deposition," reported Tierney Sneed, Marshall Cohen and Zachary Cohen. "The draft statement – which was never sent out, and hadn’t been revealed before Friday – was brought up during the committee’s deposition of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the transcript. Congressional investigators told him that they likely obtained the statement from the National Archives, which turned over documents from the Trump White House."

"The committee also said during the Cipollone interview that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously testified that Mark Meadows gave her the draft statement – which was a handwritten note – after an Oval Office meeting on the same day Barr made his public comments refuting Trump. It appears that the statement didn’t explicitly name Barr," said the report. "The committee claimed that Hutchinson testified that she was instructed by Meadows to seek Cipollone’s approval before the statement was posted on social media."

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According to the report, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Cassidy Hutchinson to seek advice from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone over releasing that statement on social media, to which he responded "God, no."

Barr, who spent most of his time in Trump's employ making a series of controversial and partisan decisions and weaponizing the DOJ against the former president's political enemies, drew the line at the demands he claim the election was stolen — something he made clear there was no evidence for. Trump has subsequently raged against Barr publicly, which accelerated after the latter stated on PBS News that the DOJ has enough evidence to indict the former president.