McCaskill: Barr Turned on Trump Because He Wants to Be Part of the ‘Normal Crowd Again’

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Tuesday on “Deadline” that former Attorney General Bill Barr was speaking to the media about former President Donald Trump in legal peril over the special counsel’s classified document probe because he wanted to be “part of the normal crowd again.”

Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I have said on this show that the most dangerous place to be these days is between Bill Barr and a camera when asked about this case. Another example here he is on CBS.

On “CBS Mornings,” Barr said, “Based on the facts as the facts come out, I think over time people will see this is not a case of the Department of Justice, you know, conducting a witch-hunt. In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president. This would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half, and the question is did he deceive them? If there’s evidence of that, I think people will start to see this says more about Trump than it does the Department of Justice, and that’s that he’s so egotistical that he has this penchant for conducting risky, reckless acts to show he can sort of get away with it is part of asserting his ego.”

Wallace said, “He knows Trump is watching. Why do you think he’s out there making these arguments about how cooked Trump’s goose is on the criminal side of the Mar-a-Lago case?”

McCaskill said, “I think this is the Bill Barr that Washington thought they knew when he got appointed, and then a different Bill Barr was captured by the position and the idea that he would have the position and he tried to do the bidding of the guy.”

She added, “It is him wanting to be part of the normal crowd again because I’m sure he’s been ostracized from what I would call real lawyers. Real lawyers know what a joke DOJ was during the Trump years and real lawyers know Bill Barr was part of it. He’s trying to say, ‘I’m not one of them, I’m one of you.’ I don’t have sympathy for that. He was there at critical time where he could have made a difference, spoken up at the time and prevented January 6th from happening. Instead, he tucked his tail between his legs and went quietly into the night once things got dicey and stood back and watched as our Capitol was ransacked and police officers were attacked.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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