Bill Barr Suggests Trump Came Very Close to Staying in Power: ‘I’m Not Sure We Would Have Had a Transition at All’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) played a clip Thursday of former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr explaining the importance of a real-time Department of Justice investigation into Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

In the clip, shown during the fifth hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Barr said, “I am not sure we would’ve had a transition at all” had the Department of Justice not investigated the 2020 election and debunked then-President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Barr’s remarkable statement highlights the role that the Department of Justice played in stopping Trump from overturning the 2020 presidential election. The January 6 committee focused its Thursday hearing on Trump’s efforts to use the DOJ to help legitimize his voter fraud claims and hold on to power – an effort that ultimately failed.

“As you will hear today, Donald Trump offered Mr. Clark the job of acting attorney general replacing Mr. Rosen with the understanding that Clark would send this letter to Georgia and other states and take other actions the president requested,” Cheney said during her opening statement – referring to Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer Trump wanted to install as the head of DOJ.

Trump wanted Clark to take over the DOJ and then pressure key states, like Georgia, to decertify their elections and throw out their slate of Biden electors and replace them with “fake” Trump electors.

“One other point. Millions of Americans have seen the testimony of Attorney General Barr before this committee. At one point in his deposition, the former attorney general was asked why he authorized the Department of Justice to investigate fraud in the 2020 election,” Cheney continued.

Barr was “asked why not just follow the regular course of action and let the investigations occur much later in time, after January 6th? Here’s what he said,” Cheney added, before playing a clip from Barr’s deposition before the committee:

I felt the responsible thing to do was to be in a position to have a view as to, whether or not, there was fraud. Frankly, the fact I put myself into the position that I could say we had looked at this and didn’t think there was fraud was really important to moving things forward.

I shudder to think what the situation would have been, if the position of the department was were not looking at this until after Biden is in office, I am not sure we would’ve had a transition at all.

Watch the full clip above via CNN

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