Trump’s ex-justice chief defends FBI raid, says strong evidence of obstruction by him

Bill Barr said it’s ‘unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club’

The FBI last month seized thousands of highly classified government records, including some marked ‘top secret,’ from Trump’s Florida estate

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Former US attorney general Bill Barr (left) and Donald Trump in Washington. File photo: AP

Published: 12:54pm, 3 Sep 2022

Donald Trump’s former attorney general said on Friday the US government appeared justified in raiding the former president’s home to recover classified materials – and that he suspected they have “good” evidence of obstruction.

Legal pressure on Trump has ratcheted up since the FBI’s August 8 raid, with details emerging of documents labelled secret improperly stored at his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida, his team delaying authorities’ access to the material, and then falsely claiming they had turned over all classified papers.

“For them to have taken things to the current point, they probably have good evidence,” Bill Barr, who led the Justice Department in the latter half of the Trump administration, said on Fox News.

“If they clearly have the president moving stuff around, hiding stuff in his desk, and telling people to dissemble with the government, they may be inclined to bring that case,” he said.

Barr spoke after a Florida court filing by the Justice Department detailed what the Federal Bureau of Investigation retrieved in its raid on the former president’s estate, which is also an exclusive club for dues-paying members.