AG Barr: What Happened to Trump in 2016 ‘Was Abhorrent, It Was a Grave Injustice’

Attorney General Bill Barr just said that what happened to President Trump during and after the 2016 election was “abhorrent” and a “grave injustice.”

He also said that no criminal investigation of former President Obama or Vice President Biden is anticipated, and it’s possible some acts, no matter how abhorrent, may not be federal crimes.

“The law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president,” the Attorney General began.

“The proper investigative and prosecuted standards of the department of justice were abused, in my view, in order to reach a particular result. We saw two different standards of justice emerge,” he added. “One the applied to President Trump and his associates and the other the applied to everybody else. We cannot allow this ever to happen again.” 

Barr then addressed the Durham investigation and lowered the expectations for what might be coming in terms of prosecutions.

“The Durham investigation is trying to get to the bottom of what happened and it will determine whether there were any federal laws broken and if there were, those who broke the laws will be held to account. This cannot be, and it will not be, a tit for tat exercise.” 

“We are not going to lower the standards just to get a result. The only way to break away from a dual system of justice is to make sure we scrupulously apply a single and proper standards of justice for everybody. Under the long-standing standards of the department criminal charges are appropriate only when we have enough evidence to prove each element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the standard we are applying.

“Now, I have a general idea of how Mr. Durham’s investigation is going. As I have indicated some aspects of the matter are being examined as potential crimes. But we have to bear in mind with the Supreme Court recently reminded in the Bridgegate case if the court said there is a difference between an abuse of power and a federal crime — not every abuse of power no matter how outrageous is necessarily a federal crime.”

“As to President Obama and Vice President Biden whatever the level of involvement based on the information I have, I do not expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.”

So there may be some charges forthcoming but it also possible that some abuses of power are not federal crimes. And Obama and Biden are not targets of the investigations.