Trump's Attorney General Has Bad News for Former President After Indictment

William Barr, who served as U.S. attorney general under Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020, had a grim assessment on Sunday about the former president's recently unsealed federal indictment.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith leveled a litany of charges against Trump on Thursday after a grand jury voted to indict him in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. This included 31 counts of willfully retaining documents with sensitive defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, with some of the documents containing "information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its Allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack."

The indictment has been called damning for Trump by a wide variety of legal experts, for the details about the types of documents he retained, as well as the lax conditions he stored them in and the lengths he allegedly went to to keep them hidden from government officials. Trump, meanwhile, has declared his innocence in the case, as he has done in all of the legal battles he is facing.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Barr added his own voice to that chorus, saying that "if even half of it is true, then he's toast," adding that he was "shocked" by the sensitivity and amount of the documents Trump allegedly retained.

"I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly," Barr told host Shannon Bream. "And so the government's agenda was to get those, protect those documents, and get them out, and I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that. It was the right thing to do, and I think the counts under the Espionage Act—that he willfully retained those documents—are solid counts."

He continued: "...I mean, it's a very detailed indictment, and it's very, very damning...This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous...Yes, his adversaries have pursued him with phony claims, and I've been at his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He's not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has...He had no right to retain them, and he kept them in a way—at Mar-a-Lago —that anyone who really cares about national security, their stomach would churn at it."

Barr also went on to debunk two common claims from defenders of Trump as "lies." Firstly, he dismissed the claims that the sensitive documents found in the possession of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence presented similar cases to Trump's, noting that both men worked closely with the National Archives in retaining the documents properly. Both men also worked quickly to return the sensitive materials once they were found.

Barr also dismissed the claim, often made by Trump, that he had broad authority to "declare any document personal" as "facially ridiculous." The former president is expected to appear at a federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday for arraignment.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's press team via email for comment.