William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general and perceived hatchet man until he split from the former president over his lies about election fraud, has a book deal.
The publisher of One Damn Thing After Another, due out on 8 March, Harper Collins, promised a “vivid and forthright” read on Barr’s long career in the law and conservative politics, in which he was first attorney general under George HW Bush.
“Barr takes readers behind the scenes during seminal moments of the Bush administration in the 1990s, from the LA riots to Pan Am 103 and Iran Contra,” the publisher said.
“With the Trump administration, Barr faced an unrelenting barrage of issues, such as Russiagate, the opioid epidemic, Chinese espionage, big tech, the Covid outbreak, civil unrest, the first impeachment, and the 2020 election fallout.”
Barr stoked rage on the left when he was seen to be running interference for Trump during the investigation of Russian election meddling and links between Trump and Moscow, his handling of Robert Mueller’s report prompting protest from the special counsel himself.
Barr was also present during many flashpoints of the Trump administration, including walking at the president’s side when in the high summer of 2020 he marched across Lafayette Square, cleared of protesters against racism and police brutality, to stage a photo op at a historic church.
Barr split from Trump, and ultimately resigned, as the president refused to admit defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Angry scenes between the two men have been reported in other books, including bestsellers by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post and Jon Karl of ABC News.
Barr stoked Trump’s rage by telling the Associated Press he had not seen evidence of “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election”.
He was out of office amid the culmination of Trump’s concerted attempt to overturn his defeat, around the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January.
On 7 January 2021, Barr condemned Trump for “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress” and said: “The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”
The same day, the Guardian published a look at the state of the Department of Justice after Barr’s second stint in the chair.
Vanita Gupta, a former head of the DoJ’s civil rights division, said: “The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influence on the decisions of career staff.
“… The department needs to be rebuilt by new leadership committed at every turn to decisions made on the law and on the facts, and not on what the president wants.”