AG Bill Barr Testifies Trump Was 'Detached from Reality' — Jan 6 Committee Hearing

Former Attorney General Bill Barr's videotaped testimony is played during the January 6 committee hearing. Barr testified that Trump started making claims of election fraud "immediately" after the election and that Barr concluded the claims were untrue. Barr described "an avalanche of all these allegations of fraud that built up over a number of days" that was "like playing whack-a-mole because something would come out one day and then the next day it would be another issue."

Barr testified that he hadn't spoken to Trump since mid-October before being called to the White House by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone on November 23, 2020. In the Oval Office meeting with Meadows and Cipollone present, Trump told Barr there "had been major fraud" and that "as soon as the facts were out, the results of the election would be reversed." Barr said Trump went on about this "for quite a while, as he's prone to do."

When Trump asked why DOJ wasn't investigating, Barr told him: "The DOJ does not take sides in elections and is not an extension of your legal team. The campaign should raise that with the states." Barr said he walked out of the Oval Office and told Jared Kushner and Dan Scavino: "How long is he going to carry on with this stolen election stuff?"

Barr stated the early claims were "completely bogus and silly, usually based on complete misinformation" and that he had told the president this directly. He added that he was influenced by "the fact that all the early claims I understood were completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation."