NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie on Monday called out former Attorney General William Barr for not listing in his 2020 resignation letter his concerns about then-president Donald Trump and instead praised the outgoing president Trump, who he has called “dangerous” to the country in a new book.
“You say in your book you were worried about the peaceful transition of power. You even had national security concerns,” Guthrie said to Barr during his first live television interview since leaving Trump’s administration. “None of this is present in this resignation letter. Didn’t the American people deserve to know what you knew?”
Barr refused to provide a direct answer and responded by saying he tendered his resignation on Dec. 14, a date by which the 2020 election was already “over for all intents and purposes.”
“The idea that something could be done later on Jan. 6 was nonsense. Once the election was locked in on Dec. 14, I tendered my resignation and I knew Trump was going to be leaving office,” he told Guthrie.
Following his election loss to Joe Biden, Trump and his allies repeatedly floated unproven theories of widespread voter fraud. Barr writes in his forthcoming book he told the president that such claims were “bullshit.”
Barr also suggested Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol during an extensive interview with NBC’s Lester Holt last week.
Trump responded by accusing Barr of going on “an image rehab tour with a lawyerly flair.”
Asked about Trump’s comments about him, Barr said: “People who know me know I don’t care much about what people think of me. I think that’s one of the reasons I was persuaded to take the attorney general job because I wasn’t looking for anything. I don’t have a future career. I’m retired and I felt I could just call them as I see them.”
Watch the video below.
You say in your book you were worried about the peaceful transition of power. You even had national security concerns … none of this is present in this resignation letter. Didn’t the American people deserve to know what you knew? –@SavannahGuthrie to William Barr pic.twitter.com/aQfdbcE10a
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 7, 2022