BREAKING: Bill Barr Stepping Down Following Trump’s Public Attacks on Him

Josh FeldmanDec 14th, 2020, 5:45 pm

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Bill Barr is not staying on as attorney general for the rest of President Donald Trump’s time in office.

THe president announced on Twitter that Barr is leaving “just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family.”

…Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all! pic.twitter.com/V5sqOJT9PM

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2020

Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen is going to serve as acting AG.

Despite the president’s insistence in this tweet that his relationship with Barr “has been a very good one” and that his AG “has done an outstanding job,” the move comes on the heels of the president publicly attacking him, as recently as this weekend, over a multitude of issues, including reports that Barr tried to keep the news of the Hunter Biden investigation from leaking.

The letter from Barr posted by the president says he’s leaving on December 23rd, two days before Christmas, and contains unqualified praise of Trump, saying at one point, “Your 2016 victory speech in which you reached out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds.”