Donald Trump keeps dragging Bill McSwain into his fight with Bill Barr
Trump is again claiming that his Attorney General Bill Barr prevented then-U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, now a candidate for Pennsylvania governor, from investigating election fraud in Philadelphia.
The war of words between Donald Trump and Bill Barr has again dragged former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain back into the 2020 election as McSwain campaigns in this year’s Republican primary for Pennsylvania governor.
The former president, in a letter last week to NBC News anchor Lester Holt, claimed that Barr, as Trump’s attorney general, didn’t let McSwain “look into the many corrupt things that happened in Philadelphia.”
The letter, like most of what Trump says about the 2020 election, is a litany of debunked claims. It came in response to an interview Barr did ahead of of his memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another,” being released Tuesday.
Barr told NBC Trump became “very angry” in a December 2020 White House meeting when Barr told the president his election fraud claims were “bull—.”
» READ MORE: Bill McSwain tried to walk a political tightrope on Trump’s election lies. Bill Barr cut it.
McSwain, in a letter to Trump last June seeking an endorsement, complained that Barr told him “not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.” He also wrote that he was “given a directive to pass along serious allegations” to state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, now the only established Democrat running for governor.
The letter did not specifically say Barr prevented McSwain from investigating voter fraud.
Barr told The Inquirer last July that he had given McSwain “discretion to look into any specific, credible allegations of major fraud,” but that McSwain was more interested in making “political statements.”
“He wanted to not do the business of the department, which is to investigate cases, but instead go out and flap his gums about what he didn’t like about the election overall,” Barr said then.
Barr also said he confronted McSwain about the letter last summer and McSwain told him he wrote it because “he was under pressure from Trump and for him to have a viable candidacy he couldn’t have Trump attacking him.”
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