By Steve Neavling
Former Attorney General William Barr disputed former President Trump’s claims that the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified records was politically motivated.
“Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”
Special counsel Jack Smith is heading up the investigation after the FBI found a trove of classified records at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. He and his team have been presenting evidence and witness testimony to a grand jury.
Barr pointed out that Trump dragged his feet on returning classified records and kept some of them after saying he had turned over all of the information.
Prosecutors are also reviewing evidence that suggests Trump and his team tried to obstruct the government investigation.
Nevertheless, Trump continues to claim that he is the victim of “a witch hunt.”
“The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in one of several posts Tuesday.
Trump’s remarks come after his attorneys met with Smith’s team on Monday.
Barr said he believes that meeting was “probably held to complain about some aspects of the special counsel’s work” and that an indictment is approaching.
“I would bet that it’s near,” he said of a federal indictment.
Barr served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly two years.
Meanwhile, Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, recently testified before the grand jury, The New York Times reports.
