DOJ ‘getting very close’ to indicting Trump

​Former Attorney General Bill Barr has said he believes the Justice Department is “getting very close” to gathering the evidence it needs to indict former President Donald Trump for improperly keeping classified documents at his Florida home.

Barr, who said last week that he knew of “no legitimate reason” for the 45th president to store sensitive material at Mar-a-Lago, told Fox News Wednesday that prosecutors must decide whether they will be able to “make a technical case” against Trump and if have the evidence to indict.

“That’s the first question, and I think they’re getting very close to that point, frankly,” Barr said.

The second question, the ex-AG went on, is fraught with political risk: “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, you know, failing to return a library book, that this was serious?” wondered Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general between January 2019 and December 2020.

“And so you have to worry about those things, and I hope that those kinds of factors will incline the administration not to indict him, because I don’t want to see him indicted as a former president.”

But Barr also said that he believes current Attorney General Merrick Garland faces a lot of pressure to indict the former president because of the perception of fairness.

“One question is, ‘Look, if anyone else would have gotten indicted, why not indict him?’” Barr asked.

The FBI raided Trump’s beachfront estate on Aug. 8 and removed ​hundreds of highly sensitive documents​, including ​top secret materials about a foreign government’s military defenses and nuclear capabilities. the Washington Post reported Tuesday.​

The report came a day after US District Court Judge ​Aileen Cannon agreed to Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the seized documents and separate out materials protected by attorney-client or executive privilege.

​Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, ​said in her order that some of the materials swept up in the raid ​included “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes and accounting information.”​

Her ruling effectively blocks the ​Justice Department’s main avenue of investigation, at least temporarily.

​Barr, in a Tuesday appearance on Fox News, ​called Cannon’s ruling “deeply flawed” and said he hoped the Justice Department appealed the decision.

​”​I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory,” he said.

The former attorney general explained that the facts of the case don’t relate to the content of the documents, “it relates to the fact that there were documents there and the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.”