William Barr, who was the Attorney General at the time, thinks the Justice Department is close to indicting Donald Trump.
The judge's order authorizing the special master to review the thousands of documents that the FBI seized last month in a raid of Trump's Florida home was again criticized by Barr.
The fight over those materials, many of which bore classification markings, is currently between the DOJ and Trump.
Will the government have the evidence to indict someone, including him? Barr appeared on Fox News three times in five days.
"That's the first question, and I think they're getting very close to that point, frankly," said Barr, who led the Justice Department from early 2019?
Do you indict a former president? "What will that do to the country, what kind of precedent will that set, will the people really understand that this is not a serious matter?" Barr asked.
Barr hopes that the administration will not indict him because he doesn't want to see him indicted as a former president.
If anyone else would have been indicted, why not indict him?
Barr wants the DOJ to appeal the ruling from Cannon. Cannon authorized the appointment of a special master to review seized materials for personal items.
The DOJ can't use or review the materials it took from Mar-a-Lago until the ruling is lifted.
The problem I have with the special master is her use of executive privilege documents. Can the former president have standing to say that the investigators don't get to look at the classified documents that he wrongly had at Mar-a-Lago?
She dodges it, and then she says she's bringing in a master to look at the issue. That's not what the disagreement is. I hope it's taken care of.
Barr said Cannon's ruling was flawed in a number of ways. He said it doesn't change the fundamental dynamics of the case, which are that documents were taken, classified information was taken and not handled appropriately, and there is some evidence to suggest that they were deceived.
Barr doubted that the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago were declassified.
If Trump stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said, "I hereby declassify everything in here," that would be an abuse and it's almost worse than taking the documents, Barr said.
Trump slammed Barr in two social media posts, calling him a weak and pathetic RINO who started off ok but faded fast.
The DOJ should have released the contents of a laptop that contained damaging information on President Joe Biden's son prior to the 2020 election, said Trump in his posts.
Trump wrote that Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, an apparent reference to Barr's refusal to back Trump's false claims that his 2020 loss to Biden was rigged.
According to Barr, anyone who disagrees with Trump that the election was stolen is a RINO.
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