Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who served under former President Donald Trump, said on Wednesday that he believes the Justice Department has nearly enough evidence to indict Trump for inappropriately storing classified records at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Barr told Fox News that DOJ prosecutors are “getting very close” to collecting enough evidence to bring charges against the former president but said that they have to make the call whether they can “make a technical case” against Trump.
“That’s the first question, and I think they’re getting very close to that point, frankly,” Barr said.
He added that the second question was politically risky: “Do you indict a former president?”
“What will that do to the country? What kind of precedent will that set? Will the people really understand that this is not, you know, failing to return a library book, that this was serious?” Barr said. “And so you have to worry about those things, and I hope that those kinds of factors will incline the administration not to indict him, because I don’t want to see him indicted as a former president.”
Last week, Barr said that he did not know of any “legitimate reason” for Trump to have stored top secret documents at his Florida estate.
On Wednesday, Bar described Attorney General Merrick Garland facing enormous pressure to indict Trump.
“One question is, ‘Look, if anyone else would have gotten indicted, why not indict him?’” Barr said.
Barr said that the case is not about the contents of the records but that “it relates to the fact that there were documents there and the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.”
The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8, seizing hundreds of documents, some of which were highly sensitive government files.