The View from the U.S. Attorney General's Office: A Conversation with Bill Barr

Published: May 5, 2023, 3:30 p.m.

b'William Barr first took the office of the United States Attorney General in 1991, serving President George H. W. Bush through the end of his term in the White House. Decades later, he would come out of private practice to become the 85th AG, replacing Jeff Sessions in the administration of Donald J. Trump. It was a surprising appointment to some, given his well-known support for Jeb Bush in the 2016 primaries. Yet Barr had publicly supported the 45th president, particularly with regard to the special counsel investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. The accomplishments of Barr\'s second tenure are well known, including both his handling of the special counsel report and his resignation in December 2020 when he refused to support President Trump\'s efforts to overturn the election.\\\\r\\\\n\\\\r\\\\nBarr\\\\\'s two stints leading the U.S. Department of Justice have given him a unique point of view on the rule of law and the functioning of the executive branch. He lays much of this out in his 2022 book One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General. The book, a number one New York Times best seller which The Wall Street Journal called \\\\"substantive and brilliant," takes its title from the words one of Barr\\\\\'s predecessors used to describe the job.\\\\r\\\\n\\\\r\\\\nAs we mark Law Day 2023, Bill Barr joins us to discuss his memoirs, his time in the AG\\\\\'s office, and the state of our democracy.'