Bill Barr will be leaving his position as U.S. attorney general before Christmas, President Donald Trump says.
In a tweet Monday evening, Trump said he had a “very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House.”
“Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!” he wrote. “As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family”
In a resignation letter addressed to Trump, Barr said he will spend the next few weeks “wrapping up a few remaining matters important to the Administration and depart on December 23rd.”
Barr has served as the country’s attorney general since 2019.
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Trump has publicly expressed his anger about Barr’s statement to The Associated Press earlier this month that the Justice Department had found no widespread election fraud that would change the outcome of the presidential election.
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Barr told The Associated Press that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow-up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Barr’s comments came after a joint statement was released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) last month which said this year’s election was “the most secure in American history.”
In the statement, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee (GCC) and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) said there is “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or “was in any way compromised.”
Barr in his resignation letter said he updated Trump Monday on the department’s “review of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election and how these allegations will continue to be pursued.”
Trump has also been angry that the Justice Department did not publicly announce it was investigating President-elect Joe Biden‘s son Hunter ahead of the election, despite department policy against such a pronouncement.
Despite the lingering tension, Trump said his relationship with Barr has “been a very good one,” adding that he has “done an outstanding job” as attorney general.
According to Trump, Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will serve as acting attorney general.
Rosen, a lawyer, has served as deputy attorney general since 2019.
The announcement from Trump came minutes after the U.S. Electoral College formally confirmed Biden’s election victory.
In a statement on Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Barr was “willing to do the President’s bidding on every front but one.”
“Barr refused to play along with President Trump’s nonsensical claims to have won the election,” the statement reads. “He is now out as Attorney General one month early.”
Nadler said whoever Biden selects to fill the role will have a “tremendous amount of work to do to repair the integrity of the Department of Justice.”
Adam Schiff, who serves as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee echoed Nadler’s remarks in a post on Twitter, saying “now, the work of restoring a credible and independent justice system must begin.”
–With files from The Associated Press and Reuters
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