Politics. Thank you for that introduction. I want to start by saying thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you, mr. Attorney general for agreeing to do it. I understand this is your first time on a College Campus since you left the administration. Right. [laughter] i think it says a lot about the university of chicago, the institute of politics and the community that you have chosen this as your first place to be. I graduated from here in 1993, that was a long time ago. When i walked onto campus, it is very different in terms of how nice it is. It is quite different. One thing that has not changed is the commitment that uc has to Free Expression and a rigorous study of critical thinking. I think that is a reflection here tonight. I appreciate this opportunity to be here. Thank you for agreeing to do this. Thank you. I thank ip[ fp i thank iop for inviting me. The most clear and present danger to democracy is the undermining of our First Amendment values. Before voting comes deliberation and debate. That is essential to selfgovernment. So, it is critically important for our society to have open and robust debate and that is what iop stands for. I am happy to attend. Lets get to it. Are you ready . Yes. I would start on the theme of your book, which is i brought a copy. Christmas is coming up. You can get them on amazon. It is called one bad thing after another. Tell us about that title. That title comes from a discussion when reagan told him he would appoint him as attorney general. This was 1980. Smith went to the last Republican Attorney general, who was formerly of the university of chicago. And levi puffed on his pipe and said, its one damn thing after another. I thought it was an excellent description of my tenure as attorney general. That was my question. Did it prove to be . Bill its always been one damn thing after another but hard to believe it was more trying circumstances at least in recent history than try to serve in this Administration Given the political climate. I will say my chief of staff was ed levys grandson, will levy. You had a very successful career and a sterling reputation, and you were willing to take that chance to go in and serve as trumps second attorney general. Why did you do that . Bill well, there are a number of reasons. I had no desire to go back in. It was to me, personally, it was a downside. Jan you didnt seek out the job . Bill not at all. Matter of fact, i was advancing other people. I knew the president would lower the boom on Jeff Sessions after the midterm election. So conservative legal circles were abuzz about who should be put forward as the successor and i was throwing names out of people i thought would do a good job. And the day after the midterms, the counsel to the president who at that time was emmett flood came to my office. Jan university of chicago guy . Bill came to my office at dirk land and ellison d. C. And said id like to put your name forward and i said no. So we kicked around some other names. But over time, a lot of people were pushing me with the president , the president kept on saying he wanted to talk to me because of a lot of people on the hill and elsewhere were saying you really have to talk to barr. So he drove me to do it. I am a republican and always have been a republican, and i was very comfortable with trumps policies and thought his administration was potentially being sabotaged and there was an effort to essentially run them out of office with this bogus russiagate thing. I was very suspicious about this russiagate thing and didnt add up to me and didnt see many members the bar stepping forward to help deal with this crisis. And i thought it was very unfair. He was a duly supported president. I didnt support him for the nomination, i supported jeb bush and rubio but once he got the nomination i supported his election. I felt he was a duly elected president and should be able to run his administration without being run out of town on this. And there was a feeding frenzy on this. And i was upset by what was happening at the department. It was in turmoil and being attacked from both sides, republicans from the hill and democrats and so forth. You know, it was dysfunctional. I had two daughters and two soninlaws at the department. I know the department pretty well. I felt someone has to come in there and deal with this who understands the department. And you know, my daughters were originally against me doing it but eventually i started saying, you know, they need leadership now and you might be in the best position to do it. I also thought in the current environment, the job, you really need to be someone at the end of your career and not looking forward to anything else. I realized i was going to get barbecued. I would have been afraid to do what i thought was the right decision due to the political consequences. I felt there wasnt that many people who were in the mix. In fact, i didnt know anyone in the mix that was in a similar position so those were the reasons i said look, if the president wants to talk to ill only talk to him if i was willing to accept it if asked. And i got over that hump and i went and talked to him and at the first discussion he said he wanted me to serve. Jan you went into it with your eyes open, though. You knew of trump. Bill yeah, i was under no illusions and knew it would be tough duty. I didnt know him personally but worked up in new york, commuted back home to virginia, but im a new yorker and was working up in new york for verizon as the general counsel and been on boards of some people who knew trump very well, including people who worked in the Trump Organization and all along, they were saying this guys bad news, dont go near him and so forth and so on. I learned a lot about him that way. I was under no illusions. I wasnt going in to be his buddy or fact totem. I thought the department of justice and f. B. I. Were institutions and thought given what i felt was my independence, that i thought i could do a good job. Jan what did you learn kind of about trump that helped prepare you to be attorney general in terms of dealing with him. And he did try to fire you at least once. Bill at the very end because i said that the election wasnt stolen. Its not black and white. Hes not the devil in canty. He has some devil incarnate. He has some good details. He can be pleasant and friendly and as a new yorker and someone who really didnt care very much about what he thought of me, that i wasnt performing for him but could be very frank and direct and didnt think any of the cabinet secretaries were, oh, mr. President , the whole world is just applauding your last speech and blah, blah, blah and they blow smoke for a while and bet to the point they want and he could see that and i was a little bit more direct. So i think that helped our relationship, sort of bottom line with him. But he is a very manipulative person and quickly appeared quickly recognized, as long as he thinks hes getting his way, hes fine. But if youre not giving him the advice he wants or yeah, if youre not giving him the advice he wants, hell find out ways of getting around it and you wont necessarily know whats happening. Jan when did that happen in your experience . Bill perfect example of it was the ukrainian situation. Where he wasnt happy with wasnt happy that there had been no investigation of the firing of shokin, the prosecutor in ukraine, and the role hunter biden may have played in that and he set up a do it yourself investigation with Rudy Giuliani and all that stuff and all kinds of communication going on that no one in the government knew about them, i didnt know about them and didnt think the National Security people knew about them. It was sort of a selfhelp program. And every time it happened, of course it would blow up in his face. The other big episode. There are a lot of examples, and next thing you heard the d. H. S. Got a call to see if theyd give the advice that we were not giving and he would frequently go to outside people. The other big example was japan 6. Was january 6. He wasnt getting the answers he wanted from the people in the government so he created a little adhoc keystone cops operation that led to january 6. Jan when you submitted your resignation, basically he put out a tweet about you and you thought you could leave the department. Bill december 19. Jan and you thought everything was settled but it wasnt according to trump. Bill december 1, i told the a. P. We didnt see we had yet to see evidence that would have changed the outcome of the election, and that zoomed around and the president was very, very angry about that and i was going over to the white house later anyway and i knew i was going into a heated situation. And i told my secretary, you might have to pack up for me because hes going to tell me not to go home after he fires me. Oh, hes not going to fire you. Jan did they also say well, you still could come back. Bill he always says that, just come back. But hes not going to fire you. I said well, im not so sure. So i went over and you can buy the book and read the prolog because thats what its about. I went into the oval and back into a little dining room that he has, and there was a very heated discussion. And during it, you know, i kept on explaining to him the various episodes he was relying on to not show fraud, and then he started complaining i hadnt indicted people like come and others that were his enemies and i said look, mr. President , if youre not happy with me, you want me to resign boom, he hit the table and said accepted, and he hit it again, boom and five other people in the room were jumping. And i said ok, and i walked out and went to get into my black f. B. I. Suburban right near the white house and all of a sudden pounding on the windows and was two lawyers that had come out including the counsel to the president. Jan they chased you down. Bill they chased me down. And they said he didnt mean it. You know, he wants you. The first thing he said was get bill back here and all that stuff. Well, thats fine but im not going back in there tonight. I talked to them later and they wanted me to stay. Because im not going to blindside them. Youll know what im thinking any time. December 14 was the day that all the states sent certified votes to the congress. And the states had certified the votes and there were no disputes. You know, maybe joe sixpack had a dispute but there was no official dispute underway. So these were final certified votes. And on december 14, i felt it was over. And there could be no more mischief and i wrote a letter of resignation and went in to give it to him. Jan did an interview with you then and you said in 2019 that you had a good professional working relationship with the president. Bill i didnt have a problem. A lot of people would say why didnt you speak up earlier . December 1 is the time i had a big disagreement with him. Jan about fraud. Bill up until the election, until his defeat in the election there were irritations and they were having to do battle and push back and so forth. But jan what are some examples of that. Setting aside january 6 and the whole concept of fraud and the election, what were some of the bigger struggles you had to kind of keep the check, keep that line . Bill one of the big ones was over the summer of the election year, the rioting going on around the country. I just want to say that up until the election, i didnt have any major problem with trump. We got along ok and i was fine with the policies and we defended the policies and we won and people say its a lawless administration. Show me. Show me something we had done that was lawless. Jan people also said you were his most loyal defender, suggesting i always thought that was a little mis bill the meeting in washington was annoyed with me because they felt i was propping him up and they felt they had him on the ropes with running backgate and my coming in stabilized the situation and were irritated and started calling me arch loyal and loyal this and loyal that. Yeah, i am loyal to the administration. Youre in the president s cabinet, im a republican. Youre also loyal to the constitution and your job is attorney general and to help the president faithfully execute the laws making sure the criminal decisions the decisions in the criminal justice arena are not made on the basis of politics. So, you know, im loyal to the president to a point but ultimately youre loyal to your oath. Jan therefore you would have some conflicts with him, disagreements. Bill we had disagreements but the one that became probably the most grading there were occasions he would want to do something we said was not legal and hed belly ache about it for a long time and get legal experts to say we were wrong and wed push back. But it was during the riots where he had this he wanted to use the military and go into cities, especially seattle and portland, to use regular military troops, and things were quieting down, had quieted down across the country, and i felt if we sent troops into portland, for example, it who be a immediate upsurge and we would be using the military all around the country. I didnt feel there was a need to do it. Portland was stewing in its own juices in that none of the judges would have supported us, not even the federal judges. I said what are our troops going to do, what are we going to do, mr. President , are they going to be standing there with fixed bayonettes, the only thing were defending is the courthouse, we can defend it with u. S. Marshals, and were doing it. What is the military going to do, are we just going to grab people and bring them before a magistrate and theyll let them go . It will just show impetus. My advice was not to do that and that was a source of contention. Obviously the military was on the same side i was on that issue. Jan jump backwards to january 6 when he did nothing to defend the capitol. Bill right. Jan tell me about what you felt watching those images. I know that your long time head of Public Affairs said turn on the tv. A lot of this is in your book. Bill i resigned, obviously. I was at home in my library jan in the run up to january 6, there was talk something might happen or were you bill i had heard on the margin of some conversations saying something there is going to be a rally january 6. January 6 there will be a big rally. In my minds eye i had a picture of one of his usual rallies with beach chairs and everything else. And him going through his usual schict. Thats what i thought would happen january 6. I wasnt paying that much i wasnt reading much about this. I was at home in my study and my head of Public Affairs called up and said do you see whats happening on the hill . I turned on the television and said it was a sickening spectacle. Especially the attacks on the police, really. If you go after a policeman holding a line like that, which was a authorized line and theyre attacking him and hitting him with stuff and breaking into the capitol and breaking through the glass and stuff. So old habits diehard. I said to my she was no longer at the department. She left the same day i did. I said, put out a statement. I put out a statement about the need to disburse those people right away. Jan certainly well in advance of hearing from the president at all. Bill right. It was before anyone in the government said anything. So then jan youre sitting there watching, you know, a mob going fighting with police to access the capitol and disrupt a proceeding thats at the heart of our democracy, right . You went into the administration because of your belief that institutions our institutions have to be protected and defended. What personally was that like for you thinking, what is he did you do you think hes doing this, what is he doing . Did you think, ive got to call him, ive got to bill one of the things i wondered is, is this actually coordinated . I didnt belly ache about an investigation into it because i wondered, you know, were people actually involved in orchestrating this thing to delay the vote . I think thats a legitimate question to ask. So that was running through my mind, is this part of a scheme to block the vote . Jan let me ask you to clarify that. Youre saying when you say, you thought an investigation wa . Bill i didnt think of what form 2 it should take or whether it should be congress or the department of justice. But i thought there were questions that had to be answered about what happened that day. Myself, i have certain views about dealing with civil disorder. Which go back to even my first time as attorney general. And because i dealt with the l. A. Riots in 19 1992, which up until which may be the most the ones in 2020 were probably more costly because they went on a longer time. And i feel you have to have at hand not necessarily all out on the street but at least in locations very close by, you have to have overwhelming force because you have to control the situation. Which i say force i mean officers, trained in civil control. The national guard, m. P. s are the best to use for that, we had 1,200 in the d. C. National guard. I was surprised there wasnt more of a federal presence to react quickly because i think you have to do that. And i think there is going to be to, some people say pelosi didnt want them and theres all kinds of finger pointing back and forth. Thats one of the things that alarmed me right at the beginning, where is the federal reinforcements . So i got calls inside the capitol from a number of the offices, some of the leadership offices from people who are trapped in there and people were pounding on the door. And they were scared. And they were pleading with me to try even though i was no longer at the department, to get some help. And so i got word to the appropriate people at the f. B. I. And they sent up a swat team, a couple of swat teams and did extract them. But that was my january 6. Jan you know when you say that you didnt belly ache about the fact theres going to be an investigation, you had questions about what happened january 6, there are certain things youd like to know about what led to that. What are some of the things what are some of the Unanswered Questions that you have . Bill i think they were probably looking at it, which is was there a plan to use violence to delay the vote . That would be a serious crime in my mind. All this talk of january 6 and these groups that came in and were loaded and looking for a fight, you know, theyre dressed up like they are swat teams and so forth and they looked like there was a lot of preplanning involved. I thought that had to be run down. The fact the department of justice has not charged anybody at higher levels with planning violence would suggest they didnt find evidence of that. Jan based on your knowledge of trump and kind of his mental state going into january 6, whats your sense of what did he do . Bill his state of mind . Jan what was your sense of what he was doing on january 6 . Bill i wasnt there. I wasnt there. But what 2 watch4 i heard from my friends at the white house was there was a big delay of almost three hours while this spectacle unfolded on television. And during which many people were going in and pleading with him to do something about it. And ask his followers to come out of the capitol. And one of the issue thes at trial would be what happened during that period . And theyll probably trot in a lot of witnesses who pled with him to stop the violence. And i think his attitude during that is going to be part of the governments case to establish his state of mind and his intent. Jan you know, we now have kind of a president ial candidate who is facing four separate indictments, two federal and two state. Potentially trial, obviously it looks like we will have trials even before the election. Bill if i could, because i usually go down this answering questions, before my confirmation, one of the things i was concerned about, this was two years before, was lack of confidence and the integrity of the elections because we were a very closely divided country with philosophical differences between the parties and that we have to have a peaceful transition. And if they dont have faith in the outcome and theres a difference of opinion of who won the election, were headed to a very dark place. And so even in the run up to the election, i kept on pointing there are two different issues. One issue is whether there is fraud. And if theres so much gamesmanship going on in the states and rules being changed at the last minute and things like harvesting and other things that raise the possibility of fraud, increase the likelihood of fraud, then people arent going to have confidence in the outcome. And whether you prove it or not, theyre not going to have confidence in the outcome. I thought the democrats were playing with fire in the lead up to the election by making all these changes. I said that, theyre playing with fire. Jan some of them were related to covid. Bill related in sort of a jan some. Bill both parties, if we want to keep this country together and yeah, if we want to keep this country together we have to assure elections are done properly. In this particular case i dont see evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome. Most of the things being cited were ludicrously false. But that doesnt mean we can let our guard down. Im sorry, you were talking about the cases. Jan and when you talk about having confidence in the outcome of the election, obviously bill january 6 in my mind took place against the backdrop of an incumbent bent administration appearing to be laying the groundwork for staying in power without coming forward with definitive and compelling evidence that they won the election. Jan there was none. Bill thats right. So my view is how can we accept the situation where an incumbent Administration Just gets to say we have no proof but we think this was stolen and theyre going to stay . Power. Where was that going to go . Jan the polls show a pretty tight race right now for 2024. What is your biggest concern about a Trump Presidency in 2024 . Bill well, i have concerns about a biden presidency, too. Jan that wasnt my question. Bill i dont want to be faced with a choice of those two individuals. Jan i think america would agree with you on that. Bill trump might one of my one of the reasons im so frustrated about trump is because i believe left to their own devices and with a kwasi normal republican conservative candidate, the country would elect a center right government by a large margin with both of the house and senate going republican. And if you look at all the battle grounds and all the key states, florida and georgia, virginia, you have conservative governors who are racking up big margins. And why isnt it happening on the National Level . Its because of donald trump and the polls show that. Independent, a lot of people have left the Republican Party from the suburbs and become independents and hes not picking those people back up. It will be a tight race probably but biden is making it much easier to win if hes the nominee with the incompetence of the administration. Jan sometimes i find myself thinking, really, were really talking about trump 2024 after january 6, after you could go through other things. How does that not disqualify him . How could bill pinch me. Im stunned by it. But whats happening is a lot of the voters, conservative voters, a lot of working class voters who recently have come into the Republican Party are very angry. Theyre angry and frustrated and i think this is reflected in their attitude, which is sort of the hell with you all. We need someone to really shake up the system. So they dont many of them are not listening to reason and theyre not interested in what it would actually take to win the kind of victory that could allow you to install your policies. Jan what do you think trump would be like as president if he wins in 2024 . Bill its about what hes saying, it would be about retribution and hes a very petty man, and its all about him. And hes a very he has a very fragile ego. Something happened to him as a kid. Im not going to spend time psychoanalyzing it. But every encounter he has to come out showing the other guy that hes better. Its all about the assertion of his ego. And i think he will be selfindulgent in a new administration. He wont be as effective as he otherwise could be and things will start moving towards chaos. Jan moving toward . Bill yeah. Jan are you worried about the department of justice . Bill well, well yeah, the department of justice. Jan hes not going to pick you for attorney general. Bill yeah, so, well jan would you do it again, a third record setting time . Bill no. The department of justice has problems. I think a lot of our departments and institutions have problems. Theyve become politicized, more and more aspects of life are politicized, not just in the government. The media is more politicized, medicine. Every institution is becoming more politicized and thats true of government agencies, and i think theres a problem at the department, theres a problem with the f. B. I. That has to be dealt with but its not like turn over the chess board. Jan are you worried about that if trump goes back in . Bill yeah, im worried. Its important that someone like trump has people around him who give him straight from the shoulder advice and arent yes people and arent afraid of him and will try to talk sense into him when he goes off on some wild idea. I dont think there will be as many people around him as there were before. Jan what is his biggest flaw . As a leader, i guess . Is it that its narcissism, manipulative, petty, so many adjectives to throw out here. Bill his biggest flaw is a lot of it is performance rather than substance. And i think his basic gap butt, what he gap butt basic gambut is a large portion of the Republican Party would be people willing to vote republican and he has captureed that and inflamed a lot of their passions. They are more interested in holding up his executive order and you would go in and say mr. President , thats all very good but we have to do a, b, c and d if we really want to nail this down. I dealt with it. I want to do lets move on to the next thing. So i think thats and look, i think a good leader has to be able to channel the frustrations and aspirations of the people in a constructive way. And take account of the fact hes president of all the people and ultimately we need some degree of unity. Were all in the same boat. And if were going to not cut each others throats we have to figure out a way of muddling through and someone who is constantly rolling around in the mud and fighting at the drop of a hat and sort of strictly in that mode, im worried about them getting us through. Jan even the last couple weeks or months, i thought his comments even on hezbollah, that was appalling. Its almost like hes do you think hes losing it or is he just becoming bill his verbal skills are limited. So hes caught if you get him away from very, very, very, you know, the adjectives theyre unfamiliar to him and they sort of spill out and he goes too far. Hes not very disciplined when it comes to what he says. Jan youre going to answer in questions from the audience in a few minutes so if you want to be thinking of some other questions youd like to ask. I guess i can circle back to what we started with. A wonderful thing about the university of chicago and whats so important to democracy is free speech and Free Expression and were here for that, but it seems so i dont know how much you think trump has played into this but the discourse in this country is broken. What were seeing on campuses across the country, disturbing isnt even the word for it. I wonder what your sense is now of how we move forward while youve still got donald trump running for president and consuming that oxygen, seeing our country and our world at a place i never really would have expected. Bill its not all about trump. Trump is a symptom, i think, rather than the cause. I think Decisive Development in society over the past couple decades has been the decisive move of the Democratic Party to the left and the left wing of the Democratic Party to the far, far left. And theres a level of condescension and elitism, condescension to the average american that started this anger. And also, i think some republican elites. Republicans have lost many republicans have lost touch with the life of the average american. And i think ultimately like aristotle said a Democratic Society needs to rest on the middle class. So ive always been comfortable with the idea of some element of popular populism in the Republican Party. And i think whats happened is weve had leaders who essentially have used that to gain power on both the left and the right, used that anger on the left and the right and inflamed it and weve been getting more and more polarized. But i think i would put the blame squarely on the left to getting the ball rolling here. Talk about the debate, you know, the threat of free speech didnt come from the right, maybe from the left and was manifesting universities and all the usual ways of taking things off the table, things are off the table. And you know, if youre a Catholic School teacher and the Catholic School is teaching traditional doctrine about marriage, its hate speech. All the terminology to stop debate and intimidate people, people couldnt get jobs and people said theyre two genders, all of a sudden theyre fired and thats a threat to the First Amendment. And that kind of thing is something that really got under the skin of a lot of average americans, they thought it was crazy and who is going to come in and take the bull by the horns here. And someone like trump got into the picture and he certainly made the most of it. Jan were going to take some q a, i guess were going to start with students. I want to thank you for the conversation. Does anyone want to go. A lot of people thought when trump would when he ran for president in 2016, they would monitor his tone as president ial and obviously that didnt happen. Did you expect that in 2016 . I keep asking, whats your bottom line if he goes in the white house in 2024, what do you expect . Bill i would ask that he rise to the occasion in 2016 and be a little bit more statesmanlike and understand that this is a unique role and hes leader of the country and president to all the people and so forth. And at the end of the day he didnt do that but i do blame this whole both the left and the media for going for this russiagate, big lie, and the way they pursued him and hounded him, especially after the election where the evidence was overwhelming at that point that this whole thing was a hoax and that they went for him, and he shows up for washington. Its very statesmanlike and very complimentary to Hillary Clinton and so forth and then gets into d. C. While he is still up in the tower confronted with the tapes of the russian hookers in the hotel and all. Wait a minute now, this is a coup. Theyre coming after me. I think Abraham Lincoln if he had been left alone by any stretch of the imagination, but i do think his behavior in office was affected by what he felt was a treacherous effort to drive him out of office. Jan 2024, bottom line. Hello w general, thank you for the opportunity. I want to circle back to a moment about the Mueller Report when he was released. You did not release the full report after it was published but instead you published certain page of conclusion. What was your logic at the time and what was the internal deliberations inside the department of justice at a time you decided you didnt want to release the full report at the first place, thank you. Bill that was mueller several weeks, let me see, what was the exact date . I cant remember. Anyway, i met with him and he was giving me a heads up of what he was going to do and verbally told me thats what they were going to do in that there was no he said there was no collusion but he wasnt reaching a conclusion on obstruction, he was just going to set forth these factual vignettes and not take a position. So we pressed him on that and asked him why and so forth. But what i said to him was look, when you give me that report, i cannot afford to have a long delay between the time you give me the report and the time we make your conclusions known, because people will know when i get the report and it will be all over the news and if theres any delay, people will say that hes gone to prison, hell be prosecuted. So you have to sanitize that report before you give it to me. You have to take out grand jury material, which is against the law to make public. Its a crime to make public. You have to take that out of the report and take out classified information and they said they would when they gave it to me. We have no way of knowing. You know whats classified. We can quickly redact it without delay. They gave me the report, its all over the news. This is page 6e material and releasing it is a crime and no indication of what had to be taken out. They didnt do what they said. I was confronted on friday with all the news shows saying well, the president is going to jail, they could start arresting people and all this stuff. We have an economy and foreign interests and we have to worry about what our adversaries is going on. I felt i couldnt wait. I field we could get everything out working with the prosecutor. Im going to state the conclusions of the report. I stated the conclusions of the report. So then i went on, to say we looked at the obstruction stuff he set forth and dont think it would amount to a crime. Then i described why we thought that. That was describing my decision. By the way, mueller he was a u. S. Attorney and had the equivalent of a u. S. Attorney and no power except the power of the attorney general. And its the attorney general its a report that under the regulation is given to the attorney general in confidence and its up to the attorney general what to do with it. Normally they would not be released and that rule was adopted after clinton by janet reno because they dont like these reports going out. I said ill make the report public. So we put that out. We put out the statement. Now, the point ive made it, theres nothing people said well, you didnt put out the report. Yeah, i didnt put out the report because i had to wait to put out the report. It was coming out in a couple of weeks and i made that clear. I didnt mischaracterize that report. I defy anyone to show me something in the letter thats not an accurate representation of exactly what mueller did. They point to the subsequent paragraph where they explain my decision, its not muellers decision, its my decision. People dont like it, thats fine. But you have to also remember, there was never going to be an indictment at that point because for the same reason you see now, you dont indict a sitting president. So the question is, was Congress Going to do something . Two weeks after i put out that report, if congress thought there was a problem, whats to prevent them from impeaching . They didnt. It was crickets. No effort to impeach the president for obstruction. They were quiet. Basically it was a temper tantrum. This attack on my handling of the report was a temper tantrum by the washington media mostly and by some of the democrats on the hill. They were desperate mueller would be st. George killing the dragon and were very frustrated and didnt turn out that way. So anyway, thats why it was done that way. Thank you, general. Hi, mr. Barr, thanks for being here today. You mentioned concession and the peaceful transfer of power. Twice in the last 25 years, weve seen challenges and rough transitions, first wag al gore challenging the votes in florida and donald trump in several swing states. Both occasions this had adverse effects and the delayed reaction between the bush and clinton administrations led to the vulnerability to terrorism and 9 11. And trumps challenges in the election culminated to the january 6. How do you think this recent trend of challenging Election Results should be interpreted and addressed. Do you think the solution might involve a bill or constitutional amendment . Bill well, elections are run by the states under the constitution. Its the state function though these are federal offices, so the running and policing of an election is done by the states. Thats something i tried to explain repeatedly to President Trump that the department of justice can look into fraud, criminal fraud but we dont have some kind of general commission to go around validating Election Results. Thats the states responsibility. And the courts. But given the closeness you know, how close the divisions in the United States are and how consequential they are, we have to come up with procedures in the states that are above reproach. Now, the good thing about florida is that it learned from bush v. Gore and they have a very good and quick election they can get the results quickly and there isnt a peep about their accuracy even though they have mailin voting, absentee for absentee ballots and so forth. So its possible to construct good systems that win the support of the people and people have trust in but a lot of the states arent doing that. And i think we have to push them to do it. Instead of trying to game the system. Not having i. D. s, for example, or, you know, jim baker and former president carter, i think it was in 2005, and two things that they pointed out that raised concerns because they were open to fraud were harvesting ballots, which i think is an abomination because it does away with the secret ballot. The whole reason we have secret ballots is make sure theres not undue duress or buying votes and so forth. But that opens the door to that if you have harvesting. And the other one was mailin ballots. Those were the two things they identified, president carter and jim baker. I think they were right. So i think we just have to be if people continue to game the system like this the other thing is our elections are turning into deliberative operations like mobilization. They mobilize people to get out the vote and less of a deliberative process these days. Thank you. Good evening, sir, thank for you being here. My name is Christopher Phillips and im a third year in the college. Im wondering many conservatives have expressed grave concerns about what they perceive to be the politicization of the department of justice and youve spoken about it a bit but id like to know more of the degrees you believe that to be true and perhaps you can analyze the particular case of the prosecution of hunter biden, do you think that has been sufficient and then perhaps what are some prescriptions you might offer to alleviate this in the future . Bill a lot of what trump said was right and strike as lot of americans on the money. When he says hey, if this was already one of my kids, hed be wearing an orange jumpsuit, hes right on that. There is a double standard in our system. Its not as bad as people frequently portray is but its there. The best way for me to describe it is to say this is not just an f. B. I. D. O. J. Problem, this is institutions. All institutions have certain a certain value they have to uphold because its part of the bigger picture. So, for example, media is supposed to get at the objective truth. That should be the value that drives coverage. And the Justice Department has to uphold certain things like due process and so forth. But the department has to try to come at it with the best idea of what the facts are and how the law should apply. Now corruption of our institutions that is happening in every institution is where people get into the institution and they sacrifice the institutional value for what they consider a higher political goal, and they justify their behavior that way. So a newspaper reporter shades the story or is more committed with the narrative or less concerned with what the narrative corresponds to objective truth. And the same thing in the department of justice. Theres people that can convince themselves that some higher political purpose justifies putting their thumb on the scale on a particular case. Or by leaking information about the case. When i was at the department, any case that was embarrassing for the republicans was leaked. The cases that were embarrassing for the democrats, including hunter biden, was not leaked. That sort of tells you about the makeup. So thats the basic phenomenon happening in all institutions and the department is not immune from it. Part of it is the people coming into the department are more on the left than they had been in the past. You see a bunch of barbarians at stanford lawjobs at the departmf justice. So, you know, keeping it on track is a full time job. Sometimes it requires overruling the career lawyers if you feel theyre being political. Which i did. I personally detest roger stone. I think he should have been prosecuted and should go to jail. But when the prosecutors, two worked for obama and one for mueller, recommended a sentence three times longer than the norm, i said no, you know. Hes not getting special treatment because hes a friend of trumps but hes not going to be treated worse either. Thats what the rule of law is. But i was roasted for that for god knows how long. Ok. Thanks. Attorney general, thank you for coming. Youve been a long time advocate for unitary theory and now youre a vocal arbitrator for trump and you say he lost it. So i wondered to what extent have the trumps antidemocratic practices, the persistent call of personality of trump in the Republican Party and a portion of his space, that not only vote for trump but also fight for trump include the way you see the proper extent of executive power, is there any change of mind . Bill no, no. This thing about unitary executive is one of the funniest sideshows going on these days. The unitary executive refers to the point that was debated at the Constitutional Convention in philadelphia. Which is, should you have just one person as the president or should you have multiple, like a committee . And there was a lot of an toyota ay antipathy to fighting against power, of king george iii, the Founding Fathers started warming to the idea of a stronger executive. So in many ways, the miracle of philadelphia was the setting up of a very strong executive but a limited executive, a executive that already had all the limitations that the wigs had achieved on the king and more. In england. So its a very interesting office that was established but the primary thing was there had to be one president. And he is the executive power. All executive powers is vested in the president. So the unitary executive, socalled theory, its not a theory, its what the constitution says. Is that congress cannot, you know, impede the president s exercise of his authority under the constitution but divide it and sort of say well, the president can only do this if this body approves it. And so if they divide the executive power, that is a violation of the unitary executive which is in the first sentence of article 2. So thats what the unitary and ive always defended that power. The main area that this has been particularly important is in Foreign Affairs and where Congress Tries to micromanage the decisions that are the president s to make. So it has nothing to do with who is in office. Sometimes president clinton took things that i felt were within his power and people were attacked for it and i said no, thats a legitimate exercise of president ial authority. So it has nothing to do with who is in power. Not sure i understood the rest of the question but thats my answer. Hi, attorney general barr. My name is cynthia, im a 3l at the law school. I was really interested in the fact that in 2020 you published a memo discussing an intention to create a task force against antigovernment extremists and in that memo, you discuss a known white supremacist organization. So without your tenure with the department, the threat of white streamiest and domestic terrorism has raised substantially the number of white supremacist threats has increased. Do you think the departments counterterrorism efforts have altered in relation to that and do you think they were sufficiently met during your time . Bill you know, my experience with socalled domestic terrorism is that historically the f. B. I. Always got into trouble when they spied on domestic groups on the on the left. And it always led to a huge reaction investigations, people, a lot of people losing their jobs. Ags putting out guidelines that limit the power of the fbi to conduct certain investigations. And all of those were on the left, they went to the anti war movement, the civil rights movements, things like that. So the fbi is very guarded about doing anything that affects the left on the whereas its very easy to penetrate groups on the right or has been traditionally. And so that is reflected in the inflow of an intelligence. Because if you have every motorcycle gang in the United States heavily penetrated, youre gonna be getting a lot of these reports. But you get fewer reports on the left. So i think part of it, part of it is our, is the difficulty of conducting Domestic Intelligence while respecting the First Amendment. Its a very delicate area. And what that has what has happened over the years is that we have far less information about left wing terrorism than we do the right. So i dont care where they come from. I dont care uh whether theyre on the right or left. If they pose a domestic threat, we have to deal with them. And, um, boogaloo, i mean, a lot of these groups are hard to, to, to pigeonhole as right or left. Boogaloo, in my opinion, is essentially a nihilistic group that wants to spawn a, you know, civil war in the United States. And its not because they want to, you know, restore the constitution of 1789. You know, they, i, i, im not sure why people call them conservative. But yeah, thats the problem we face with domestic, trying to deal with domestic terrorism. Thank you. I was gonna say, i think were going to have time for two more questions. Unfortunately. Hi, good afternoon, mr barr. My name is seth cohen. Im 1 4 year in the college. Do you think that congressman comers investigation will lead to either congressional action, legal action or affect the election in anyway . Thank you. You mean the one on hunter biden . The influence peddling, yes, sir. Yeah. Well, you know, i, thats another area that i feel really has to be thoroughly investigated. I thought it was being investigated when i left the department. There was no way that that investigation was going to be completed before the 2020 election. So its not a question of and, you know, hurrying up to get something to win the 2020 election that was not going to be done before the 2020 election. And therefore, really the onus at that point was to make sure that it doesnt prematurely leak out before any conclusions were reached, which was accomplished. But after the election, i thought it was going to be vigorously pursued by the delaware us attorneys office. And im wondering what happened and, you know, a lot of the stuff that comes out now appear to be huge red flags, and i hope theres a good answer as to, you know, why those, you know, were was that known was that did the invest was the investigation thorough . And do they have answers for that. If theyve come to the conclusion that theres no, there there, they, id like to hear it and until i hear that, you know, im not sure about what they found and what their conclusions and judgments are, but certainly the stuff youre looking at coming out is pretty damning. At least it raises a lot of red flags and if theres something there, obviously, i mean, i, ive already said publicly, i, ill be surprised if biden is the nominee and its partly because of his obvious degeneration of his health and his, you know, uh, and but i think coupled with it and, and his unpopularity and the unpopularity of his Vice President , but i also think that there could be traction on this scandal and, and why have, you know, the democrats may come to the conclusion they dont want to deal with it. So and this is gonna have to be, im sorry, the last question. Hello. Um, so, first of all, thank you for coming here. Um, second of all, uh, with the recent strike down of affirmative action in the Supreme Court. Um, im wondering what your thoughts are on the ruling and its future set for precedent. Um, for affirmative action is used as an equitable tool, um, moving forward. Um, well, i mean, i support, i supported the Supreme Courts decision. Ive always felt that, uh, reverse discrimination is not the way to achieve a color blind society. And, you know, i, i actually think a lot of progress has been made and we dont need the degree of affirmative action in the sense of reverse discrimination that weve had. So, im sure theres going to be a lot of guerilla warfare played with academic institutions in the courts. Its going to take a long time to sort it out. Ok. Are you troubled by some of what youre seeing the attacks on the courts . Yeah, i mean, i think all our institutions are under assault. I think, you know, i think the attack on the Supreme Court now, uh, you know, it depends whose ox is being gored and left, the left is very aggressive in going and trying to attack and undermine, you know, confidence in the Supreme Court and, you know, that this will head in the direction of just sort of saying, well, its a political body anyway. Its not really the law. Its essentially a group of wise men that, you know were not so wise . Platonic guardians. So, i think, you know, i think its a bad direction to take a flouting of the law and, and thats why, you know, at the end of the day when people flout the courts or flout the law, uh, you know, they have to be taken to, held, to account for that. And, um, you know, worried about the breakdown of the rule of law and part of that is the idea that you can just disregard the rulings of the court. Well, on that note, i i just want to thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation. And id like to especially thank the institute of politics. Uh you guys are, are really, so its so impressive and youre so fortunate to have such a, a terrific organization bringing people together. And finally, the questions from the students were, i think the best questions ive ever heard in an event like this, they were terrific. So im not surprised