President Donald Trump said he will nominate former George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General William Barr to return to head the Justice Department again.
President Donald Trump said he will nominate former attorney general William Barr to return to the head of the Justice Department.
“He was my first choice from day one,” Trump said upon leaving the White House for Kansas City, Missouri on Dec. 7.
Trump said he hoped for a quick confirmation of Barr by the Senate, calling the man “one of the most respected jurists in the country” and “a terrific man.”
Barr would replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned at Trump’s request a day after the November midterm election. The office is being held in the interim by Sessions’ former chief of staff Matthew Whitaker.
Barr would inherit a department set up by Sessions to implement Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration and operations against human trafficking, drug trafficking, and transnational gangs, particularly MS-13. Barr would also oversee the Special Counsel investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election. Recently, there have been signs that the investigation is nearing its end after a year and a half and a slew of indictments, none of which substantiated the allegations.
It’s been decades since Barr served in the federal government. He was first recruited to join the Justice Department in 1989 by the late President George H. W. Bush. He served as Bush’s attorney general from 1991 to 1993. He served under Bush before that, however. After finishing his graduate studies, Barr joined the CIA between 1973-1977 and toward the end of that period “occasionally helped write testimony for the director,” who was Bush at the time, The Washington Post reported in 1991.
