Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is standing with former President Donald Trump against New York Attorney General Letitia James. This Democratically appointed judge just began a massive civil lawsuit against Trump and his children. Barr called it as he saw it, a “political hit job.”
This week James announced a $250 million lawsuit against the former president and his adult children. It is the result of a three-year investigation into what James says is a fraudulent misleading of investors and tax authorities by Trump and his organization.
James claims that Trump inflated his net worth to “unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system.” And she claims that this broke state and federal laws, even though she is not criminally prosecuting Trump. She will refer her findings to federal prosecutors as well as the IRS.
Barr did serve in the Trump White House administration, but he is no ally of the former president. Despite their antagonistic past, he declared that this case was a clear example of partisan attacks.
The former attorney general had two reasons for this conclusion. The first is that James campaigns on her plan to investigate Trump.
“It’s hard for me not to conclude it’s a political hit job,” he said on Fox News.
“This is a woman who campaigned for office promising she was going to go after Trump, which I think is a tremendous abuse of office to go head-hunting and targeting individuals. So, I think she was targeting Trump,” he said. “This is, after three years, a civil lawsuit, the gist of which is that when the Trump Organization borrowed money, Trump personally guaranteed those loans.”
“To support that, she’s claiming that he inflated his assets on his financial statements. Now, I’m not even sure she has a good case against Trump himself,” Barr explained.
And the second reason is that James targeted Trump’s children.
“But what ultimately persuades me that this is a political hit job is [James] grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into this. Yes, they had roles in the business, but this was his personal financial statement,” he explained. “It was prepared by the CFO. Accounting firms were involved in it. The children aren’t going to know the details of that, nor are they expected in the real world to do their own due diligence and have it reviewed independently.”
Barr has predicted that this whole lawsuit will backfire.
“This, to me, looks like gross overreach, which I think is going to end up backfiring on them because I think it will make people sympathetic for Trump — that this is another example of people piling on because of Trump derangement syndrome, this strong desire to punish him,” Barr said.
Barr also made the point that since this is a civil case, that probably means that James does not have the evidence to make a criminal prosecution.
“I don’t think it’s gonna go any further,” Barr predicted.
Watch:
Bill Barr on NY AG's lawsuit: "This is a political hit job. I think it's gonna back firing on them. For Trump this is another example of people piling on because of TDS." pic.twitter.com/TUZGsg8gQz
— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) September 21, 2022
