Bill Barr, once an attorney general for Donald Trump who has since emerged as one of his most prominent critics, said on Wednesday that despite his differences with his former boss, he will support “the Republican ticket” in November.
“I heard you call this hush money case ‘outrageous.’ And I also know you’ve been asked many times — you’ve had your disagreements with the former president,” Bill Hemmer on Fox’s “America’s Newsroom” asked Barr. “He’s the presumptive nominee — we assume he will be the nominee. Will you support him in 2024?”
“I’ve said all along given two bad choices, I think it’s my duty to pick the person I think would do the least harm to the country,” Barr replied. “And in my mind, I will vote the Republican ticket. I will support the Republican ticket.”
“I think the real danger to the country — the real danger to democracy, as I say — is the progressive agenda,” he continued. “Trump may be playing Russian roulette, but a continuation of the Biden administration is national suicide in my opinion.”
Barr, who left the Trump administration in December 2020 after publicly refuting the then-president’s claims of a stolen election, has often criticized Trump, including saying that the former president knew he lost the election even as he was trying to overturn it and that he thinks Trump would lose on the national level.
Barr has also spoken on Trump’s indictments and criticized in June claims by Trump and some of his allies that he is being targeted and unfairly treated by the federal government in its case against him for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
But despite the criticism, he has signaled an openness to voting for Trump again.
“My view is that, if you feel that one of two people is going to be president — in other words, there’s no third option — one of two people are going to be president, then, at that point, you have to do your soul-searching as to which one you think would do least harm to the country. And that’s the analysis that I would do,” he told CNN in August.
Barr gave testimony in 2022 to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, where he described in detail why Trump’s fraud claims were “bogus” and why he has seen nothing since to convince him there was fraud.