In an interview on Thursday, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr said the allegations regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information do not compare to those against former President Donald Trump.
A comparison of Clinton and Trump made by Fox Across America host Jimmy Failla caused Barr to push back, saying that Clinton had left the State Department six years before he became attorney general. The administration under former President Barack Obama found no criminal wrongdoing, Barr added, saying that when he was appointed during the Trump years, he "brought in some fresh eyes, and professionals looked over stuff."
"I think the level of the documents in Hillary's situation—the ones we had—were not as raw as being portrayed in news reports," Barr told Failla. "We still don't know exactly what Trump had."
Clinton's email server, which became a national story prior to the 2016 election, never led to any criminal charges. She was asked about Trump's handling of classified documents Tuesday during an appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, basically laughing off Trump's alleged actions.
The former Democratic nominee for president did call out former FBI Director James Comey on Twitter that same day, saying that he "admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails."
"Trump's own State Department, under two different secretaries, found I had no classified emails....By contrast, Trump has hundreds of documents clearly marked classified, and the investigation just started," Clinton tweeted.
On Monday, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon delayed an ongoing Department of Justice investigation by granting a still-to-be-determined special master to review some 13,000 documents found at Mar-a-Lago. More than 100 of those documents originally requested by the National Archives and Records Administration are reportedly classified.
Former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz lauded Cannon's appointment of a special master due to lawyer-client and executive privileges "rooted in the Constitution." Another former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, said Tuesday on MSNBC that his former boss "should have been indicted already and facing consequences."
Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who was appointed the special master for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, told Bloomberg "it is not going to be so easy" finding someone to determine attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
Barr called the special master decision "deeply flawed" in a separate Fox News appearance on The Story with Martha MacCallum.
"I don't see it fundamentally changing the trajectory," said Barr, who served in Trump's administration between February 2019 and December 2020. "In other words, I don't think it changes the ballgame so much as maybe we'll have a rain delay for a couple of innings."
A recent report by The Washington Post says that a document about a foreign government's nuclear defenses was part of the document trove discovered at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump's support among his Republican base isn't waning, regardless of whether or not he is ultimately charged in connection to the documents. A new poll shows that more than six in 10 Republicans would still vote for Trump if he ran for president in 2024.
Newsweek reached out to Trump for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
