Former Attorney General Bill Barr was critical of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to ban his former boss, GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump from the ballot and predicted that it could backfire.
In an appearance on CNN, the nation’s former top law enforcement official discussed the unprecedented move by four Democrat judges to validate the dubious argument by leftist legal scholars that the former president is automatically disqualified from ever returning to the White House because he led an insurrection against the government.
Speaking with anchor Jake Tapper on Wednesday’s edition of “The Lead,” Barr found the ruling to be fundamentally flawed because it denied Trump his constitutional right to due process and will only play into the most persecuted political figure in American history’s insistence that the system has been rigged against him.
(Video: CNN)
“Well, as you know, I strongly oppose Donald Trump for the Republican nomination,” Barr said after the host asked for his reaction. “But I think that this case is legally wrong and untenable. And I think this kind of action of stretching the law, taking these hyper-aggressive positions to knock Trump out of the race are counterproductive. They backfire. As you know, he feeds on grievance just like a fire feeds on oxygen, and this is gonna end up as a grievance that helps him.
Tapper then rehashed the details behind the decision that was an early Christmas gift to Trump haters but the former AG threw cold water on any idea that it would be a lasting one, suggesting that it’s going to soon die a quick death at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Beyond the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, do you disagree with any of that?” Tapper asked.
“I disagree with the court’s ability to make those findings,” Barr responded. “The core problem here is the denial of due process. To deprive somebody of the right to hold public office requires due process, requires an adjudication of two core issues. One, was there an insurrection? Did the public disturbance rise to the level of an insurrection, and second, what was the role of the individual in there?”
“was it engagement? Did they do something to break their oath of office? Those are complicated facts and this was denied due process,” he said. “It was a five-day hearing. There was no jury, it was before the judge. They were not able to subpoena witnesses and compel the attendance of witnesses.”
“They relied on you know, the hearings, the January 6th Committee hearings which is mostly hearsay,” he added, throwing shade at the now defunct Soviet-style Nancy Pelosi-Liz Cheney spectacle. “There was no right to cross-examine during those hearings and so forth…”
Barr then praised the dissenting Colorado judges. “By the way, the three Democratic justices who dissented, their opinions I think are masterful and as they pointed out, they say the process here was a procedural Frankenstein.”
The nation’s highest court will be tasked with deciding whether or not the ruling stands or will be swatted down like the un-American travesty that it is.