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January 6 committee has already spoken to former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, chairman says

Trump Barr
President Donald Trump stands with Attorney General William Barr during the 38th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, May 15, 2019, in Washington.

  • The Jan. 6 committee has spoken to former Attorney General Bill Barr, Rep. Bennie Thompson said.
  • Barr was a staunch ally of Trump but broke with him in December 2020 on election fraud claims.
  • Thompson was asked about Barr in light of a draft executive order about seizing voting machines.

The select House committee investigating the Capitol riot has spoken to former Attorney General Bill Barr, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said on Sunday.

Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and was asked about a draft executive order obtained by the committee written in the weeks after the 2020 election that would have directed the Defense Secretary to “seize” voting machines in battleground states. 

Host Margaret Brennan asked Thompson if the committee planned to speak with Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general from February 2019 to late December 2020.

“We’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already. We’ve talked to Department of Defense individuals. We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false. So if you are using the military to potentially seize voting machines, even though it’s a discussion, the public needs to know. We’ve never had that before,” Thompson said.

 

Barr was a staunch ally to former President Donald Trump. But on December 1, 2020, after a month of Trump pushing false and unsubstantiated claims about the election, Barr said publicly the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud that would change the results of the election. Trump continued to push fraud claims and Barr resigned later that month.

The draft executive order on seizing voting machines was published by Politico on Friday, but the existence of the document was first reported in December 2020. It’s unclear who wrote the draft and it was never signed by Trump.

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