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US Attorney General Bill Barr and US President Donald Trump. File photo; AP

Bill Barr’s future in doubt as Donald Trump’s pursuit of political enemies flops

  • US quietly ends probe of Obama-era ‘unmasking’ of Trump allies
  • Trump calls finding a ‘disgrace’, lashes out at his attorney general
Agencies

US President Donald Trump would not say whether he plans to keep Bill Barr as US attorney general if he wins re-election in November.

Trump said in an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax that it was “too early” to tell if he would ask Barr to remain at the Justice Department. The president has recently expressed frustration with Barr for not doing more to prosecute his political enemies ahead of the November 3 election.

“I have no comment. Can’t comment on that. It’s too early,” Trump said in the interview when asked about Barr’s future. “I’m not happy with all of the evidence I have, I can tell you that. I’m not happy.”

A federal prosecutor tapped by Barr to investigate whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the names of Americans in intelligence reports related to the Russia investigation didn’t find any major instances of wrongdoing, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Trump called that finding “a disgrace”.

“I think it’s really a horrible thing that they’re allowed to get away - when they say no indictments, they actually said no indictments before the election,” Trump said.

Trump in interviews with Fox News, said Barr would go down in history “as a very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Trump’s rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

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Trump vs Biden: The 2020 US presidential election

Trump vs Biden: The 2020 US presidential election

The Justice Department in May appointed John Bash, a federal prosecutor from Texas, to lead the inquiry after Republican senators unveiled a declassified list of US officials who made requests that ultimately disclosed intercepted conversations between Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador.

Flynn was later charged with lying to the FBI about those conversations, and the Justice Department is now asking a federal judge to have that charge dismissed.

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Bash resigned from the department this month without a mention of his findings.

Another US attorney selected by Barr to look into the Russia probe, John Durham, was not expected to release his findings until after the election.

Barr told some lawmakers not to expect a report before Election Day because Durham was focused on prosecutions and he fears a public report could interfere with that goal, according to a Capitol Hill aide familiar with the matter.

Barr has generally been seen as one of the president’s most loyal aides. Trump in late 2018 picked Barr to replace Jeff Sessions, who was ousted over his decision to recuse himself from the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Photo: AP

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has vowed that his team was doing “everything we can” to release additional emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the department, something the president demanded last week in a rare rebuke of his top diplomat.

Pompeo, the longest-serving member of Trump’s national security cabinet, has found himself in the unusual position of having to respond to the president’s public criticism after he and Barr were singled out last week.

Trump vs Biden: the 8 states that will decide the 2020 US election

At a news conference on Wednesday at the State Department, Pompeo snapped at a reporter who questioned whether doing the president’s political bidding on the Clinton emails would constitute a violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activities of government employees while they are on the job. Trump has long led “Lock Her Up” chants against Clinton for her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

In other signs of divergence between Trump and his top officials, FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly said that Russia remains the biggest foreign threat to the US election, despite Trump frequently saying that China was a bigger worry.

And the president’s pick to lead the Homeland Security Department, Chad Wolf, said last month that white supremacists have become the “most persistent and lethal threat” to the US from within the country, despite the president focusing his criticism on left-wing protesters.

Bloomberg and Reuters

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