As Donald Trump continues his campaign for president in 2024, the rest of the political world is preparing for his possible federal indictment.
On Monday, Trump’s attorneys met with Justice Department officials in their ongoing investigation of the classified documents found at the former president's Florida residence. A grand jury in the state is reconvening this week after a long hiatus to weigh charges.
“I suspect it’s near,” former Attorney General Bill Barr said Tuesday on CBS Mornings. “I’ve said for a while that I think this is the most dangerous legal risk facing the former president. And if I had to bet, I would bet that it’s near.”
After Trump lost in the 2020 election to president Joe Biden and left the White House, the National Archives searched for months to locate the the records. When Trump eventually relented and returned over 200 classified documents, the Justice Department began their investigation, sparking the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, where an additional 100 classified records were found.
Trump has argued that he had the authority to hold the documents on his property, and has slammed the investigations against him as a "witch hunt." On Tuesday, he lashed out on social media against the Justice Department, as well as the FBI.
“It’s all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE. They don’t want to run against me,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “I ran twice, I did much better the second time, getting millions and millions more votes than the first, a record for a sitting President, and am leading Biden in the polls, by a lot. They are the Party of Disinformation! They are using the DOJ & FBI against me to Rigg the 2024 Election.”
Barr refuted the former president's claims, expressing confidence that not only will Trump be held accountable, but public opinion may also begin to shift.
“I think based on the facts, over time people will see this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere if the president just returned the documents.”
