In his newly released tell-all book, Bill Barr recalled a bizarre meeting he walked out of before it even started. According to the passage in One Damn Thing After Another, Barr was called to a meeting at the White House that top aides to Donald Trump lied to him about.
According to Barr, it was April 2020 and he was called to a meeting in Mark Meadows' office. Meadows wasn't there and they moved to the Roosevelt Room.
"We stood around for several minutes waiting," Barr wrote. "John McEntee, the young head of presidential personnel [then 29], drifted in, his faced buried in his cell phone. Kash Patel made an entrance."
Barr said they all refused to answer why they were at the meeting. "Suddenly a man in his fifties walked in and introduced himself as Bill Evanina, an FBI agent currently serving in a senior position in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Everyone continued to stand around the conference table in awkward silence. I surmised quickly the purpose of the meeting. I didn’t know who was supposed to show up to lead it, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out."
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“Bye,” Barr told them and walked out.
He then went to Meadows calling the meeting an "obvious set up" to get him to appoint Evanina as the director of the FBI and Patel as his deputy ahead of the election.
"What the hell is going on?" Barr asked, writing that Meadows shook his head.
“I didn’t know they were going to pull that,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
It was months later when the country found out about Evanina's thoughts on the election. In a statement from the Office of National Intelligence, he claimed that China was the major threat to 2020 election security. It caused some counter-intelligence experts to scratch their heads.
In a private briefing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chided Evanina for twisting the facts to mostly blame China when the intelligence clearly showed that the top concern was Russia and to a lesser extent China.
Politico reported in Aug. 2020, about the meeting, saying that he angered Democrats who believed he was intentionally whitewashing the Russian threat. Evanina then dodged the issue entirely attacking Democrats, saying they leaked classified information that he'd previously reported in a press release.
"Trump’s ire at [FBI Director Christopher] Wray was episodic, flaring up whenever the low-key FBI chief crossed his radar," said a separate Politico report. "Congressional testimony on Russia, always a sensitive subject, could provoke Trump’s anger. So could Wray’s pronouncements on election security or his defenses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law the former president blamed for enabling Democrats’ supposed 'spying' on his 2016 campaign. Trump also thought Wray was weak, according to one of the former Trump officials."
But firing not one but two FBI directors over four years and right before an election probably wasn't the best look politically. At the time, it was reported that Barr said he'd resign. In the book, Barr goes on to explain that it wasn't clear who cooked up the plot but that it certainly didn't come from the Trump leadership. Though, it could have come from Trump himself.
"When told that Trump wanted to replace Wray with Evanina and make Patel deputy, Barr calmly told them he couldn\u2019t stay in his job if Trump\u2019s preferred picks were installed at the FBI over his objection." One more indication that the Barr=Mephistopheles narrative is too simple.— Harry Litman (@Harry Litman) 1621657786
ODNI was furious about our reporting that Bill Evanina acknowledged in a classified briefing that Russia was again trying to help Trump. But even after that, ODNI still scheduled a briefing for September. So attributing this sudden change to leaks alone doesn\u2019t make sense.https://twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1300072105334120449\u00a0\u2026— Natasha Bertrand (@Natasha Bertrand) 1598803780
2/ Earlier this year, reports start coming into Congress about a giant, multi-layer Russian effort to help Trump in 2020. Bigger than what they did in 2016. Looks like Russians are trying to get U.S. persons - especially those close to Trump - to help.— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1601585989
4/ On 7/24, Bill Evanina, Trump's counter-intel chief, releases a super vague statement. 72 words on Chinese/Iranian interference, and 54 words on Russia.\n\nVery puzzling. Congress has never been briefed on any meaningful Chinese/Iranian interference plans.\nhttps://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2135-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-100-days-until-election-2020\u00a0\u2026— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1601585990
6/ Then, on 9/9, a bombshell that few noticed. The head of intelligence at DHS (the top guy!) files a whistleblower complaint. \n\nHe says the White House instructed him to bury info on Russian interference because it "made the President look bad."https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senior-dhs-official-alleges-in-whistleblower-complaint-that-he-was-told-to-stop-providing-intelligence-analysis-on-threat-of-russian-interference/2020/09/09/9d0661c4-f2b6-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html\u00a0\u2026— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1601585990
8/ No press conference from Intel or the FBI or DHS that they've caught a Russian agent who has been in regular contact with the President's inner circle. \n\nNope. Just buried in a sanctions announcement. Likely because so many people knew the intel, they knew it would come out.— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1601585991
10/ It's why Trump's former National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, said something today that is as shocking as it unsurprising.\n\nHe said Trump is "aiding and abetting" Putin's interference campaign. \n\nWow.\n\nBut of course he is. And now you know the details.— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1601585991
President Trump claimed falsely last night that Russia prefers Biden. In fact, the US intel assessment, as detailed by his National Counterintelligence & Security Center Director Bill Evanina in August, is that Russian interference is intended to \u201cprimarily denigrate\u201d @JoeBiden— Jim Sciutto (@Jim Sciutto) 1603457884
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