Barr: Trump a ‘weak’ element on the Republican ticket

Former Attorney General William Barr said voter fraud isn’t why President Donald Trump lost in 2020 — it was because he was a weak candidate.

During a recording of Barr’s testimony to the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, Barr ripped and, at times, mocked claims of rampant fraud in the 2020 election while pointing to Trump’s shortcomings as a candidate.

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“I think once you actually look at the votes, there’s an obvious explanation,” Barr explained. “For example, in Pennsylvania, Trump ran weaker than the Republican ticket generally. He ran weaker than two of the state candidates. He ran weaker than the congressional delegation running for federal Congress.”

“That does not suggest the election was stolen by fraud,” he said.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Barr reviewed allegations of malfeasance in the election and was unimpressed, he told the panel during his testimony. Footage from Barr’s deposition was used to buttress testimony from Al Schmidt, a former city commissioner of Philadelphia, during the hearing on Monday.

Schmidt was the only Republican commissioner of Philadelphia when Trump was pushing to challenge the election in Pennsylvania and argued claims from former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that thousands of ballots were cast on behalf of dead voters lacked merit. Appearing separately from Schmidt, Barr gave a similar assessment and countered claims of peculiar voter turnout figures.

“It kept on being repeated, and I found it annoying,” Barr said. “That was absolutely rubbish. The turnout in Philadelphia was absolutely in line with the rest of Pennsylvania. … There was nothing strange about the Philadelphia turnout.”

Throughout clips of his deposition, Barr voiced frustration with claims about voter fraud. At one point, he recalled an “awkward” meeting with Trump on Nov. 23. It was his first meeting with Trump since the middle of October 2020. Trump hounded Barr to pursue election fraud allegations, but Barr resisted.

“It was a little … awkward because, obviously, he had lost the election, and I hadn’t said anything to him,” Barr said. “I said, ‘You know, that has to be the campaign that raises that with the state, and the department doesn’t take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of your legal team,'” Barr continued.

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A few weeks later, Trump and Barr reached a tipping point over the election claims, and Barr resigned in December of that year. Trump has publicly chastised his former attorney general since his departure from the White House.