Mr. Barr “did an incredibly good job of trying to repair damage to our Department of Justice, trying to be fair and loyal to the law, and I think he has a lot to be proud of,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a Trump’s close ally, told reporters who informed him of the news.
Barr, 70, who also served as attorney general in the George Bush administration, was initially seen in Washington as a possible stabilizing force in Trump’s chaotic era, but that expectation dissipated when he targeted the Justice Department’s own investigation into the Os Trump’s campaign ties to Russia that have long antagonized the president.
Mr. Barr brought the Justice Department closer to the White House than any attorney general in half a century. Defying the distance that federal police officers often maintain from campaign policy, Barr spent the months leading up to the election echoing Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud. He also told an interviewer that the country would be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if the president were not reelected.
But Barr declined election fraud warnings after the election, saying little publicly for weeks, until he said the department had not received any evidence that could overturn Biden’s election. “So far, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have caused a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press.
Trump was livid with Barr’s refusal to endorse his increasingly specious allegations of voting irregularities, and also focused on whether any scrutiny by Hunter Biden was an issue that could have influenced voters, aides said. The president told aides he would like to see a special lawyer appointed to oversee Hunter Biden’s investigation. It was unclear whether Barr was willing to do so, and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
When The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Barr struggled to prevent the public from knowing the Justice Department’s investigations into Hunter Biden, following the policy, it was clear that the attorney general could not remain in the post, advisers to Mr. Trump said.
The recent series of departures from the president’s views was rare for Barr, who worked from the beginning to advance Trump’s political agenda, undermining the most significant conclusions from the investigation in Russia. Weeks after taking office, he released a summary of the report by special attorney Robert S. Mueller III, which a judge later called distorted and misleading, and gave a press conference shortly before the full report was released, where he described it in the best possible light for Mr. Trump.