Trump's former AG Bill Barr says failing to prosecute Trump would be 'unjust'

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Next, we have an assessment of the federal charges against former President Trump. The assessment comes from William Barr, who served as attorney general in the Trump administration. Trump took classified documents from the White House to Florida when he left office and did not return them. Last year, the FBI seized some of those documents. And last month, special counsel Jack Smith announced an indictment.

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JACK SMITH: We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.

INSKEEP: Trump supporters have made the opposite claim, saying that conservatives face a double standard. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan made that claim just this week. We heard him on MORNING EDITION. He wove the Trump search and prosecution into his party's ongoing narrative against law enforcement.

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JIM JORDAN: American speech is censored. Parents are called terrorists. Catholics are called radicals. And I haven't even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president's home.

INSKEEP: So that's Jordan's view. But President Trump's former chief of law enforcement sees the indictment differently. William Barr served as Trump's attorney general for just under two years. He later documented his disappointments with Trump in a book called "One Damn Thing After Another."

WILLIAM BARR: I think he got into trouble because he defied the subpoena and, according to the government, obstructed the subpoena, and the acts that they set forth are pretty egregious. And I think they will attempt to show that his state of mind was, as they say in the law, contumacious. This was a willful violation that was effectively flipping the bird at the government.

INSKEEP: You have maybe a better idea of the former president's state of mind than a lot of people since you worked with him. Why would you imagine that he would want to defy the government and keep these documents?

BARR: Well, my own opinion is that it was a power play. It was essentially the government wanted him and that this is his - this is an act of self-assertion. But once the government said give them back, then he was going to show them that no one was going to push him around and that he, you know, was, in effect, still the president and could do what he want and get away with it.

INSKEEP: The way you're describing this case, Mr. Barr, is, of course, very different than it's being described in a lot of conservative media and in a lot of Republican circles. Even people who say they are no fans of Trump will allege this is a political prosecution. What are you saying when you get in conversations like that?

BARR: Well, you know, what I say is there have been cases in the past where I think his enemies in the left have gone after him obsessively and unfairly and, you know, told lies about him and that he was, in that sense, a victim. But in this case, in my opinion, he was not. This, he provoked himself. He brought it entirely on himself and through a pattern of conduct that is also typical of Trump, which is going to excess and doing reckless things with the idea that he can get away with it.

And the government got videos and other information indicating that he was cheating them. He was deceiving the government and still not giving everything back. So I don't think the government had much of a choice at that point but to execute a search to retrieve the documents. And everyone presented that as some outrage. And, you know, well, why didn't you ask him? Well, it turns out they had asked him for a year and a half. Oh, why didn't you get a subpoena? Well, it turns out he got a subpoena.

The fact is that anybody, a general or a former diplomat or anyone who did this, would be prosecuted and go to prison, OK? So this is a righteous case as far as the law is concerned. There's - this next question is, as a matter of prudential judgment, is there a reason not to do the prosecution? And I think the basic argument being made here is that Hillary Clinton was let off. Therefore, you should let off - there's a double standard - and, therefore, you should let off Trump. And, you know, I don't think that that's a frivolous argument. But it's hard for me to fault the decision to go forward because, to me, the solution to a double standard is to apply the right standard in a case and try to apply it going forward even-handedly.

INSKEEP: You're saying that even if the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton was wrong, that the Justice Department should still do what is right in your view and prosecute here.

BARR: Yeah. I don't think the way to stop the double standard is to keep on perpetuating it by having equal injustice. The argument that Hillary should have been prosecuted - well, what was unjust is Hillary was not prosecuted. What is unjust is not prosecuting Trump at this stage. How do you control and protect classified information going forward? You just prosecute the little guys, but you let the big guys get off if they flip the bird at the government? I mean, I'm not sure where that takes us.

INSKEEP: I'm thinking about the old saying justice delayed is justice denied. If Trump's lawyers succeed in significantly delaying this case, even getting it delayed until sometime after the election, is that justice denied?

BARR: Well, it depends who wins the election. I mean, if - I think if Trump wins the primaries and is the nominee, which I do not think he will be, but if he is and then if he gets elected, my assumption is the case would be dropped, or he would have the case dropped. I mean, it will be a mess. It'll be a mess.

INSKEEP: If he can't get the Justice Department to drop the case in this hypothetical scenario, does he have the power to pardon himself?

BARR: Well, that's nothing I've studied. You know, I think he might have the power to pardon himself, but I don't want to lock myself into that position 'cause I've never really studied it. This is one of the tragedies facing the country. Here we are with this panoply of problems, and we're going to have an election that centers on, you know, the personal excesses of Donald Trump.

INSKEEP: He's been indicted twice. Do you think it's likely he'll be indicted again? There is this investigation in Fulton County, Ga., into his interference in the 2020 election. There's the entire investigation into January 6. Would you find it reasonable to see another indictment of Trump before long?

BARR: Yeah. Now, I'm certainly not cheerleading for it because they seem to help him. But it seems to me that Georgia is poised to do this. They've taken it pretty far, so I assume they're going to finish it. And my own belief is that the Justice Department is going to indict people on the January 6 matter. And my own bet would be that would include the president. But obviously, I don't have any inside information on that. It's just my sense of things.

INSKEEP: Former Attorney General William Barr, thanks very much for the time.

BARR: Yep. Thank you, Steve.

INSKEEP: He spoke with us yesterday, and our conversation touched also on the Republican primary campaign. Barr is hoping that Republicans do not nominate Trump again. But if they do, he's not sure who he'd vote for.

BARR: It would never be Joe Biden, but I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.

INSKEEP: Barr says he'd pick a candidate who he thinks could win and who would do the least damage. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.