Trump says Attorney General William Barr leaving before Christmas

An anonymous source told CNN that Barr planned to resign his post before Jan. 20, when President-elect Joe Biden is scheduled to be inaugurated. The New York Times was first to report the story. Barr now is leaving before Christmas.

Last week, Barr said the U.S. Justice Department has found no evidence to support Trump’s repeated allegations of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.

Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The comments, which drew immediate criticism from Trump attorneys, were notable coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion mail-in voting could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

Last week, Barr also revealed in October he had appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as a special counsel, giving the prosecutor the authority to continue to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe after Biden takes over and making it difficult to fire him. Biden hasn’t said what he might do with the investigation, and his transition team didn’t comment.

Trump has long railed against the investigation into whether his 2016 campaign was coordinating with Russia, but he and Republican allies had hoped the results would be delivered before the 2020 election and would help sway voters. So far, there has been only one criminal case, a guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer to a single false statement charge.

Under federal regulations, a special counsel can be fired only by the attorney general and for specific reasons such as misconduct, dereliction of duty or conflict of interest. An attorney general must document such reasons in writing.

Barr went to the White House last Tuesday for a previously scheduled meeting that lasted about three hours.

Trump didn’t directly comment on the attorney general’s remarks on the election. But his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his political campaign issued a scathing statement claiming that, “with all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance” of an investigation into the president’s complaints.

Other administration officials who have come out forcefully against Trump’s allegations of voter-fraud evidence have been fired. But it’s not clear whether Barr might suffer the same fate. He maintains a lofty position with Trump, and despite their differences the two see eye-to-eye on quite a lot.

Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election was certified.

That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.