Former US Attorney General William Barr, who served between February 2019 and December 2020 during the term of former President Donald Trump, described as "nonsense" the accusations of the now ex-president that there was electoral fraud in the elections 2020.
This is revealed in the book "Betrayal", written by the chief correspondent of ABC News in Washington DC, Jonathan Karl, which will be published in November and of which The Atlantic magazine published an excerpt this Sunday.
The text, which is based on a series of interviews with the former attorney general and his assistants, describes how Barr broke with Trump after last November's presidential election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump did not acknowledge Biden's victory, claiming electoral fraud without providing evidence.
Barr told Karl that at the time he was faced with a "take it or leave it" dilemma in justifying his decision to approve investigations into these fraud allegations, which included unofficial inquiries he conducted himself.
"If there was evidence of fraud, I had no reason to contain it (the investigations), but my suspects all the time were that there was nothing. It was all bullshit," he said.
Barr also claimed that allegations by Trump and his collaborators that the vote counting machines had been rigged to alter the direction of the vote for Biden are not true.
"We realized from the beginning that it was all just nonsense," said Barr, who last December decided to break definitively with Trump by giving an interview to the AP News news agency to clarify that the Department he headed had not seen "fraud. on a scale that could have affected a different election outcome. "
After seeing the publication of the interview, Trump and Barr had a bitter meeting at the White House, where the president exploded against him and asked "How the hell are you doing this to me? Why are you saying it?", To which he Attorney General responded "because it's true."
The president then replied, "You must hate Trump, you must hate Trump," speaking of himself in the third person.
Trump also rebuked Barr for not indicting Biden's son, Hunter, for his business in Ukraine.
Two weeks later, Barr submitted his resignation, while the president continued to insist on his unsubstantiated allegations that there was electoral fraud.
The book also exposes the pressures of the then leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, -now he is from the minority in that chamber- on Barr to raise his voice against these allegations by Trump.
According to the former US Attorney General, McConnell conveyed to him that those allegations were hurting the country and the Republican Party, as well as the conservatives' efforts to win in the January Georgia special election, which were crucial in deciding who. he took control of the Upper House.
