2d UPDATE Barr's Book: Trump Lied About 2020 Election Being Rigged & Fraudulent for Biden

Ships passing in the middle of the night

(Trump-Barr: Get the f**k out: Aye, aye sir)

SECOND UPDATE (June 29, 2021): Of the following first update and the original story. 

This update from Business Insider via Yahoo News – with this headline:

“Trump rips into 'weak' and 'pathetic' Barr in scathing statement” 

Trump lashed out at former AG Barr, calling him “weak and pathetic” in a scathing statement.

Trump said: “I lost confidence in Bill Barr long before the 2020 Presidential Election Scam. He was afraid, weak, and frankly, now that I see what he is saying, pathetic.”

Trump’s comments come after a newly released book excerpt said that Barr suspected Trump’s allegations of fraud during the 2020 election were “all bull sh*t.”

Trump went on to call the reports in the book, written by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent, Jonathan Karl, “made-up beyond any level imaginable and fake news.”

Trump also claimed that he lost confidence in Barr saying: “When he didn’t act on the very powerful Horowitz Report, and instead gave everything over to John Durham, who has seemingly disappeared from the planet. Can you even believe a report coming out during the Biden Administration? We caught them but unfortunately didn’t have an Attorney General who was capable of acting and wouldn’t go against his friends in Washington DC.”

Trump then accused Barr of being a “swamp creature” who folded when under pressure from political opponents saying: “Barr was a ‘swamp creature’ who was devastated when the Radical Left wanted to impeach me. He, and other RINOs (you see it all the time!), always fold. If he becomes less for President Trump, maybe they will leave him alone. It takes a very strong and special person to go against the mob. Bill Barr was not that person.”

Trump then again falsely argued that future findings would end up vindicating his claims of fraud, saying: “Despite evidence of tremendous Election Fraud, he just didn’t want to go there. The facts are rapidly coming out in States and Courts about the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, and let’s see if Bill Barr, a man who was unable to handle the pressure, was correct? The answer will be a resounding, NO!”

The First Update is next and then the original article which completes this by putting all the pieces together in this Trump vs. Barr tit for tat.

FIRST UPDATE (June 28, 2021): This short important introduction supplements the main article which I posted earlier and follows this added information from former AG Barr reported on by ABC reporter Jonathan Karl – formatted to fit the blog and yes, it’s lengthy.

Trump is a man consumed with grievance against people he believes have betrayed him, but few betrayals have enraged him more than what his former AG William Barr did to him.

The unkindest cut of all was when Barr stepped forward and declared to The AP there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

That was just as Trump was trying to overturn Biden’s election victory by claiming that the election had been stolen, rigged, and corrupt.

In a series of interviews with Jonathan Karl (ABC News) this spring, Barr spoke for the first time about the events surrounding his break with Trump. Karl also spoken with other senior officials in the Trump White House and DOJ who provided additional details about Barr’s remarks to the AP and later comments, and then Trump’s later explosive responses.

Barr and those close to him have a reason to tell his version of this story. He has been widely seen as a Trump lackey who politicized the DOJ. But when the big moment came after the election, he defied Trump who had expected him to do his bidding. Now Barr has seen the light as they say – he blows the top off of Trump’s wild claims that 2020 was stolen from him in this stunning story from The Atlantic.

This update includes several eyewitness accounts from 5 people who met with Barr and verified the dramatic meeting firsthand on December 1, 2020 with this headline:

“Inside William Barr’s Breakup With Trump”

Barr’s betrayal (also the title of his forthcoming book) came on December 1, over lunch in the AG’s private dining room, also in attendance:

(1) Michael Balsamo (AP reporter at the DOJ); (2) DOJ CofS Will Levi; and, (3) DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec. AP reporter Balsamo was not told the reason for the invitation.

When Barr dropped his bombshell between bites of salad, he mumbled, and Balsamo wasn’t sure that he had caught what the AG had said, he ask: “Just to be crystal clear are you saying — ”

Kupec then interjected: “Sir, I think you better repeat what you just said.”

Barr repeated – this time Balasamo heard him correctly: “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

Balsamo’s article then appeared on the AP newswire shortly after that lunch ended with this: “Disputing Donald Trump’s persistent baseless claims, Attorney General William Barr declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.”

The story blew a hole in the president’s election fraud claims.

Nobody seriously questioned Barr’s conservative credentials or whether he had been among Trump’s most loyal cabinet secretaries. His conclusion sent a definitive message that the effort to overturn the election was without merit.

Barr also said that Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had been urging him to speak out since mid-November. Publicly, McConnell had said nothing to criticize Trump’s allegations, but he told Barr in private that Trump’s claims were damaging to the country and to the Republican Party.

Trump’s refusal to concede was complicating McConnell’s efforts to ensure that the GOP would win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia the following January 5.

To McConnell, the road to maintaining control of the Senate was simple: Republicans needed to make the argument that with Biden soon to be in the White House, it was crucial that they have a majority in the Senate to check his power. But McConnell also believed that if he openly declared Biden the winner, Trump would be enraged and likely act to sabotage the Republican Senate campaigns in Georgia. 

Barr relayed his conversations with McConnell to Karl. McConnell also confirmed the account and had said to Barr: “Look, we need the president in Georgia, and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”

Barr said: “I understand that. And I’m going to do it at the appropriate time.”

McConnell again called Barr and pleaded with him to come out and shoot down the talk of widespread fraud saying: “Bill, I look around, and you are the only person who can do it.”

Will Levi, the DOJ CofS, had also been urging Barr to contradict Trump’s assertions. But Barr had said nothing publicly to indicate that he disagreed with the president about the election. In fact, the week after the election, he gave prosecutors the green light to investigate “substantial allegations of vote irregularities that could potentially impact the outcome of the election.”

FYI: The move overturned long-standing policy that the Justice Department does not investigate voter fraud until after an election is certified.

The theory behind the policy is that the department’s responsibility is to prosecute crimes, not to get involved in election disputes.

Barr’s reversal of the policy was interpreted by some as a sign that he might use the department to help Trump overturn the election.

Barr told also Karl: (1) That he had already concluded that it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election, (2) that he had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome, (3) that he knew that at some point, that Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and (4) that he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded.

In addition to giving prosecutors approval to open investigations into clear and credible allegations of substantial fraud, Barr began his own, unofficial inquiry into the major claims that the president and his allies were making.

Barr said: “My attitude was it was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshït.”

The DOJ ended up conducting no formal investigations of voter fraud, but as part of Barr’s informal review, but he asked the U.S. Attorney in Michigan about Trump’s claim that mysterious “ballot dumps in Detroit which secured Biden’s victory in the state.”

Barr quickly found that there was a logical explanation. It had to do with how the 662 precincts in Wayne County, home to Detroit, tabulate their votes saying: “In every other county, they count the ballots at the precinct, but in Wayne County, they bring them into one central counting place. So the boxes are coming in all night. The fact that boxes are coming in — well, that’s what they do” adding: “Trump didn’t lose Michigan because of illegal ballots cast in Detroit. He lost Michigan because Biden beat him badly in the suburbs.”

Barr also looked into allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes. He received two briefings from cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

Note: The DHS part was with CISA Director Chris Krebs whom Trump fired a few days after he declared the election was the most-secure ever.

Barr concluded: “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshït.

Barr further told Karl: “Noting that even if the machines somehow changed the count, it would show up when they were recounted by hand. It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted. So you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”

My 2 cents: Thanks for stropping by for this critical story – it is a real keeper for sure.

ORIGINAL POST FROM HERE:

The truth about the “real” Donald J. Trump is oozing out … this story from Mediaite from former AG Barr is stark with this headline:

“It Was All Bullshït: Barr Opens Up About Shooting Down Trump’s 2020 Election Lies”

First, this story from the Washington Examiner here in part and which was posted after the original story was published which follows below:

Last December, Barr told The AP that he and his team had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”

Trump allegedly confronted Barr after the report came out and a heated dialogue ensued regarding The AP story (this also according to ABC’s Jonathan Karl).

Trump asked Barr: “Did you say that?”

Barr simply said: “Yes.”

Trump reportedly yelled: “How the f**k could you do this to me? Why did you say it?”

Barr replied: “Because it’s true.”

Barr then allegedly told Trump that “no self-respecting lawyer would go near his election challenges after the Justice Department vetted some of his claims.”

Barr then concluded: “You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to make legal challenges. That would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”

The original post starts here:

An upcoming book on Trump’s final days in office is providing explosive details on the break between him and former AG William Barr.

The Atlantic obtained an excerpt of “Betrayal” (title of the book)  from ABC’s Jonathan Karl, which delves into how Trump and Barr’s relationship with each other deteriorated in the aftermath of the 2020 election. 

Barr spoke to Karl and recalled how he and Trump reached their breaking point when the former AG refused to back up Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the election was marred by fraud and corruption.

After speaking with Barr in the process of writing the book, Karl wrote that the former AG’s “betrayal” of Trump occurred on December 1, the day Barr said in an interview that the DOJ had seen no evidence of fraud that would’ve changed the outcome of the 2020 election. That was even though Barr previously raised concerns earlier by green lighting a 2020 election probe.

Karl writes that Barr told him that: “He had already concluded it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election. He had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome. He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded.”

Barr said: “My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.” 

Barr later recalled the briefings he had with cyber-security experts (See my post about that here) who dismissed the idea that voting machines were rigged in some way to switch Trump votes to Biden votes.

Barr said again: “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshït.”

Barr’s remarks against election conspiracy theories not only blasted a hole in Trump’s claims at the time, it also factored into McConnell’s concerns that this would further derail the GOP’s chances of winning Georgia’s runoff elections and maintaining their hold on the Senate.

For McConnell, the road to maintaining control of the Senate was simple: Republicans needed to make the argument that with Biden soon to be in the White House, it was crucial that they have a majority in the Senate to check his power. But McConnell also believed that if he openly declared Biden the winner, Trump would be enraged and likely act to sabotage the Republican Senate campaigns in Georgia. 

Barr related his conversations with McConnell to Karl and then McConnell confirmed the account.

McConnell told Barr at one point: “Look, we need the president in Georgia, and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”

Barr responded: “I understand that. I’m going to do it at the appropriate time.”

My 2 cents: Barr is gone and good riddance to bad rubbish. 

Further, Barr is a lousy human being to wait now and tell the public the truth.  I hope his book does not sell one single copy. He is dishonorable and a disgrace to the position of trust he held at the AG. 

He did not fulfill his oath of office, period.

Also, Mitch McConnell needs to be gone, too. He has been a major roadblock to almost every DEM plan, proposal, project, or anything else, and he has been years (e.g., his moves that got the 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court while blocking DEMS nominees at every turn). The man is incorrigible. He never needs to regain the majority again, never, ever.

Finally, now we know why Trump never addresses stories like this that is except to belittle them and call them lies and the authors liars and and such. Why not otherwise? 

Simple: Trump knows those events are true and did happen, but he can never admit to any shortcoming in his entire adult life, and that is key to his skillful con employed to keep his loyal base in tow with his sustained pack of lies.

Thanks for stopping by.