Former Attorney General Bill Barr criticized the Fulton County, Ga., indictment of former President Trump as “too sweeping” and “too broad,” arguing that it helps “feed the narrative” that Trump is being unfairly targeted by prosecutors.
“I’m not happy with the Georgia case,” Barr told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Thursday. “I think it’s much too sweeping, much too broad, excessive case that is [going to] make it look like people are piling on and being excessive to Trump and feed the narrative that he’s being victimized here.”
“I also think there’s merit in the point that this is a case that I don’t think is going to be triable before the election,” he added. “It’s just too sprawling.”
The former president was indicted by a Fulton County grand jury Monday alongside 18 others, ranging from Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark.
The indictment, which is Trump’s fourth this year, brought a litany of charges over the former president and his allies’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Trump was also indicted on federal charges earlier this month over his efforts to block the transfer of power after the election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Another federal case in Florida accused the former president of mishandling classified materials and blocking the government’s attempts to recover them, while a fourth case in Manhattan took aim at a 2016 hush money payment that Trump’s fixer made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general until stepping down in December 2020 over disagreements about the pervasiveness of election fraud, added Thursday that he thinks the two federal cases are more likely to go to trial.s
“They are, I think, the responsible cases,” Barr said. “They’re far more focused. And I think they can be and will be tried before. The New York case is obviously a political hit job, and, in my opinion, it’s a joke.”