Trump blasts AG Barr over Hunter Biden probe secrecy, condemns Supreme Court order tossing election challenge
President Donald Trump on Saturday morning lashed out at targets he blames for costing him the presidential election against Joe Biden: His attorney general, William Barr, two Republican governors and the Supreme Court.
Trump, facing a big defeat Monday when the Electoral College is set to pick the Democrat Biden as the next president, on Twitter painted a distorted picture of being stabbed in the back by fellow Republicans, four of whom he put into their current jobs.
Trump explicitly said that the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona should be voted out of office.
And Trump retweeted a post that said Barr “should be fired by the end of business today” if the attorney general had worked to keep a criminal investigation of Biden’s son Hunter Biden secret during the election, as The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
“A big disappointment!” Trump wrote in a comment on that post, which ignores the fact that Barr appeared to be following ethical rules by keeping mum about a probe where the target has not been criminally charged.
Hunter Biden disclosed earlier this week that he is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Delaware for possible tax crimes, but said he followed the law with his taxes.
“Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden. Joe was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong, or going on – Press confirmed. Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls!,” Trump wrote in another tweet.
Barr already was under fire from Trump for saying the Justice Department had not seen any evidence of widespread ballot fraud that would lead to Biden’s victory being undone.
Trump predicted in a third tweet that “IF” Joe Biden “gets in” to the White House, “nothing will happen to Hunter or Joe.”
“Barr will do nothing, and the new group of partisan killers coming in will quickly kill it all,” he wrote.
The same tweet blasted a top federal prosecutor, John Durham, for failing to file any significant charges before the election related to what Trump claims were crimes by FBI officials and others in investigating his 2016 campaign and its dealings with Russians. Durham was appointed by Barr to probe the origins of the so-called Russia investigation.
Trump’s tweet tirade came the morning after the Supreme Court said it would not allow Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file a lawsuit directly to that court challenging the election results in four states whose popular vote wins by Biden pushed him over the victory threshold of 270 votes in the Electoral College.
Paxton’s effort was endorsed by filings from 18 attorneys general from other states where Trump had won the popular vote, and by a majority of Republican members of the House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court, which has three out of nine justices appointed by Trump, said Paxton did not have legal standing to contest the voting procedures of the states, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The ruling is a fatal blow to Trump’s bid to reverse Biden’s electoral win through lawsuits.
Two conservative justices not appointed by Trump, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said he would have allowed Paxton to file the suit, but would have ruled against him on the merits of his claim.
“This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice,” wrote Trump, who after the ruling skipped a White House Christmas party that he was expected to speak at.
“The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country was disgraced. Never even given our day in court.”
Twitter blocked that tweet from being shared on its platform, by others, including CNBC. Twitter labeled the tweet with the message, “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
The same label got slapped on Trump’s subsequent tweet, which said, “I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!”
Trump later wrote that “The Supreme Court had ZERO interest in the merits of the greatest voter fraud ever perpetrated on the United States of America.”
“All they were interested in is “standing”, which makes it very difficult for the President to present a case on the merits. 75,000,000 votes!”
Those kinds of claims by Trump have failed to gain traction in any of the state and federal lawsuits filed by his campaign and his political allies in multiple states.
Trump also attacked two Republican governors, Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey of Arizona, each of whose states were won by Biden, and each of whom rejected Trump’s characterization of those wins being bogus due to massive fraud.
Trump wrote that both governors were Republicans in name only, and should be tossed out of their jobs in the next elections.
“Who is a worse governor, @BrianKempGA of Georgia or @dougducey of Arizona??? These are two RINO Republicans who fought against me and the Republican Party harder than any Democrat,” Trump wrote.
“They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen. Never forget, vote them out of office!”
As the morning went on, Trump claimed that “thousands of people” were gathering in Washington, D.C., for “Stop the Steal” protests endorsing his conspiracy theory.’
“I’ll be seeing them!” he tweeted.
