Attorney General Bill Barr plans to remain in his post and won’t resign early unless President Donald Trump moves to oust him, a Department of Justice official told Bloomberg News in a report published Thursday.
The revelation about Barr’s reported intentions to stay put come as Trump has raised doubts about whether or not he still has confidence in the top DOJ official who has typically served as a reliable legal henchman.
When asked by reporters earlier this month whether he still had confidence in Barr after reports that the attorney general had told the Associated Press in an interview that the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale” that would overturn the election, Trump said he would need to revisit the question “a number of weeks from now.” At the time he also complained that the attorney general, who he has often called on to do his political bidding, hadn’t “looked very hard” to find the kind of fraud that his campaign has falsely claimed.
It wouldn’t be the first time Trump has decided to dismiss an official within his administration for failing to dutifully side with his false claims. Last month, Trump fired his defense secretary Mark Esper, as well as DHS cybersecurity official Chris Krebs for defying his assertions about widespread election fraud — saying that the Nov. 3 election was secure.
Barr will be expected to resign when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, the official said — although he’s already set into motion a special counsel to continue his investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe, naming U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut to keep after the investigation after his departure.
