The growing divide between the former president and his onetime ally has been underscored by the emergence of William Barr as one of the most prominent conservatives to suggest that the former president may be in serious legal jeopardy over his handling of sensitive materials.
Over the past few weeks, Barr has become a regular on Fox News, weighing in on the FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the DOJ battles over what it found.
It is not the first time that Barr has broken with the president. He is not the first Cabinet member to criticize the former president.
He has stood out recently for his willingness to undermine the preferred narrative of Trump's allies and the Republicans.
According to Alan Morrison, a law professor at George Washington University, Bill Barr is a law and order kind of guy.
I think his remarks here are in line with his stance on people who violate criminal laws. Morrison said that he was trying to protect the Justice Department.
In the past two weeks, Barr has made a number of appearances on Fox News to defend the Justice Department and the investigation into President Trump.
The former attorney general told Fox News he wasn't sure if Trump had declassified everything he took to Mar-a-Lago as he claimed.
I think the driver on this was a lot of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. It is also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club.
The push for a special master to review the FBI documents has been criticized by Barr. The legal strategy was called a red herring by the former attorney general.
The decision to appoint a special master was deeply flawed in a number of ways, according to Barr.
The Justice Department is close to indicting someone in the case, including possibly Trump, according to Barr.
The comments were notable coming from a man who Democrats and some legal experts criticized throughout his latest tenure as attorney general, accusing him of viewing himself as the president's lawyer.
Morrison thinks it is a partial repudiation of Trump but he thinks it is more about wearing his law and order hat.
There has been a growing divide between the two men.
There is no love lost between Trump and Barr, according to a former Trump administration official.
The recordings of Barr's closed-door depositions were used in the public hearings of the House committee.
Trump's claims about election fraud werebullshit, "nonsense" and "idiotic" according to Barr. Video of Barr saying he worried Trump had become detached from reality as he raised the false premise that voting machines were designed to rig the election was shown in one hearing.
The same insult was used by Trump in response to Barr's commentary on Fox in which he said authorities likely had good evidence to pursue its search of Trump's home.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that Bill Barr had no guts. He became a captive of the Radical Left Democrats because he was afraid of being impeached.
While the vast majority of conservatives have lined up behind Trump to offer shifting defenses of the former president, a few conservatives and former Trump officials have joined Barr in publicly recognizing the seriousness of the matter.
In New Hampshire late last month, the former Vice President said that he was troubled by the search and that the public needed to let the facts play out.
Trump is in serious legal water, not just because of the ongoing investigation into his handling of classified documents, but also because of efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election, according to Ty Cobb, who was a lawyer in the White House during the Russia investigation.
The possibility of Trump being indicted is very high.
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