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William Barr says many people have the wrong idea about his time as attorney general in the Trump administration.
"The media chose to weave a narrative that I was a toady to the president, and that was false from the beginning, because I felt I could be independent, and I was," he told Morning Edition in an interview that aired on Monday.
Barr gives his version of events in a new memoir called One Damn Thing After Another, a reference to how one of his predecessors described running the Justice Department. In an NPR interview, Barr maintains that he bluntly refuted the president's notions about a stolen election. He also defends his interventions in investigations of Trump and his allies.
The memoir takes a critical look at Trump's presidency, and suggests Republicans should nominate someone else in 2024. If Trump ran again, Barr told NPR, "I think that he would be one of the weaker candidates. We have a lot of young candidates who will fight for principle but don't have the sort of obnoxious personal characteristics that alienate a lot of voters."
Yet the book is just as notable for how much Barr still agrees with the former president. He blames left-wing progressives, not his own party, for dividing the country.
Barr describes the former president as constantly distracted by his own self-interest. This trait was exploited by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state at the time:
"We had this...
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