Former AG Bill Barr Sits Down to Talk with Buck

BUCK: I am now joined by the former attorney general under President Trump and attorney general once before that as well, also author of One Damn Thing After Another, which is already a big best-seller. It’s available now, if want to go pick it up, get your copy of it. Bill Barr, good to see you.

BARR: Great to be here, Buck.

BUCK: So you already made news earlier today. You talked on Fox about the Afghanistan withdrawal from the Biden administration and how you think that that created a pathway, a green light, a perception among Putin and his top advisers about Ukraine. Tell us more about this.

BARR: Yeah, well, his — Putin’s red line has always been he doesn’t want NATO right on the border of Russia; so he didn’t want Ukraine going in to NATO. But there was no urgency about that. It wasn’t as if that was gonna happen anytime soon.

And I felt after Biden won the election that Putin would decide he didn’t need to negotiate, he could take what he wanted under Biden. And then when there was Afghanistan — and I put that in my book — and then when Afghanistan occurred, I think that, you know, crystallized Putin’s view that this guy was weak.

BUCK: How do you think it’s been handled since invasion, since the tanks rolled in into Ukraine from the Biden point of view, the diplomacy, all of that?

BARR: Well, it’s hard to say since the tanks rolled in because he should have been putting these — the weaponry in before the tanks roll — we knew that this was a big risk of him moving in, and the name of the game was deterrence, but he didn’t put the weapons in at that point. That would have made Putin stop, if the MiGs had been transferred and weapons had been transferred.

Now, since the invasion I think generally he’s been doing the right thing in terms of arming and supplying Ukrainians and rallying NATO support, although sometimes it’s NATO rallying our support. We always seem to be half a step behind.

BUCK: And I wanted to ask you about election integrity because we got a midterm coming up here. Democrats are not looking like they’re in a good spot. That’s based on every poll that anybody could point to and see.

People still have very intense feelings, as you know, about the last election and going forward there should be some questions that are answered about what either went wrong or could go wrong the next time around, went wrong that time, could go wrong the next time.

What are the biggest challenges that you see it as the former attorney general and somebody who was right on the forefront of this issue to an election in this midterm that people can say, it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough that we can have full faith in it?

BARR: Well, I feel there are really two issues. One issue is — and I stress this from my confirmation hearing all the way through — we’re a very divided country. All we have going for us is peaceful transfer of power through elections. And if we lose confidence in that we’re in a very bad spot.

So everything has to be done to ensure the integrity of the election. In my opinion the Democrats throughout the country have been reckless and irresponsible because they essentially have been pushing for elections on the honor system. And I believe we should have — the fact of the matter is unless you have the system in place at the time of the election, it’s hard to come back afterward and find the fraud and have a remedy.

And so I am all for stepping up all the integrity measures we can, stopping this idea that we should roll back or dilute these measures, because if you do, people won’t have confidence in the election. Whether or not you can prove fraud, they will not have confidence.

Now, as you know, on this particular election, I did not see evidence, and I’m fairly confident that there was not fraud at the — at the level that would have affected the outcome of the election. But that does not mean that we should not step up all the efforts we can to make sure they’re fair.

BUCK: Speaking to former attorney general Bill Barr. The book, One Damn Thing After Another is out now, for those of you who want to hear — or read, rather, more about what it was to be the attorney general under President Trump, what he had to deal with. And I want to ask you. You came into the center of the storm on Russia collusion. You came in when that was already a maelstrom meant to harm the Trump administration in every way possible.

It is beyond any doubt that this was rooted in lies, that this was false intelligence launder through the top reaches of the government and — you know, we can’t — I can’t get into everything now. People know listening about all the things happening here, the media working with the deep state and all this. Are we ever gonna get a full accounting for what happened in your own mind? I know there’s still the Durham investigation underway. Is this something that the American people should think standpoint we’ll really know the full extent of what happened?

BARR: Yes, I think he will get to the bottom of what happened, as well as humanly possible to get the evidence and lay it out for the American people. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I was persuaded ultimately to come in to the administration. I had been attorney general before, and it wasn’t that attractive a proposition to me, to be frank. But I felt we were heading toward a constitutional crisis. I was very skeptical of this whole Russiagate thing from the beginning. And what you say is right. It was a dirty trick. It was a sham. And I never felt there was a predication for investigating the Trump campaign. And I felt very soon that the real issue is how did this damn thing get started? And that’s why I appointed Durham, to get to the bottom of it.

Now, you know, Durham didn’t have the benefit of the inspector general’s report until the end of 2019, and then we had covid; so it hasn’t been as fast as I wanted, and it’s frustrating. But there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll get to the bottom of it. And if there’s charges to be brought, I think he’ll bring them.

BUCK: Was it even beyond your expectations as a dirty trick once you were inside of government at the top level of law enforcement, the attorney general, got to see and experience and be around what was going on then — I think it’s hard for people to imagine from the outside what it must be like to be the attorney general when there’s essentially a soft coup attempt underway from a collusion, a real collusion between the media, some elements of the federal bureaucracy, and the Democrat Party and the Hillary campaign all at once.

BARR: That’s right. You know, I came in — or, you know, we had had eight years of Obama administration. Taking over an agency after that certainly the complexion of the agency had changing since the last time when I took over after Reagan. But, yeah, I was shocked at the lack of basis for the FBI action. And to me it’s inexplicable — for example, you know, the dossier came from somebody who had been suspected and investigated of being a Russian agent. And that had never been resolved. And yet they seemed to take the dossier and run with it. Never went back to check on it. So I was shocked at the lack of basis for the FBI’s conduct.

BUCK: Just wondering if you have any thoughts as somebody who knows the D.C. and federal legal and judiciary circuit quite well, nominee for the Supreme Court committee Ketanji Brown Jackson. What do you think?

BARR: You know, I think she’ll be just what the progressive wing of the Democratic Party could hope — everything they could hope for in a nominee. She’ll bevery much over on the left.

BUCK: Is it kind of sad to watch the Supreme Court become so — I mean, people always say, “It’s not political!
And then they have a political argument about it.

BARR: Yes.

BUCK: I think it’s unserious at this phase now to pretend that it hasn’t become at some level an instrument of politics. Do you think we ever get back from that?

BARR: I hope that the conservative majority takes us back from that, but you’re right. That’s where it was headed. And I think that is essentially the view of the left, which it’s a super legislature that should, you know, take their bearings from the zeitgeist and impose their will, but I think because of our conservative majority, I think we can pull back from that.

BUCK: Former attorney general, Bill Barr. The book, One Damn Thing After Another. Go check it out for yourself. Bill, thanks so much for being here. Good to see you.

BARR: Thanks, Buck.