William Barr Is Trump’s Top Choice for Attorney General, Sources Say

(Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr has emerged as President Donald Trump's likely choice to succeed Jeff Sessions as the nation's chief law enforcement official, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Barr, if nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, would replace acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who has been filling the position since Sessions was ousted Nov. 7. He would take over management of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by Trump's campaign -- the issue that cost Sessions his job.

Barr has been mentioned as a potential nominee, and Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is in line to lead the Judiciary Committee next year and oversee Barr's confirmation, said he would be a good choice.

“He'd be an outstanding choice,” Graham said last week. “I think he could get confirmed very easily.”

Bush Official

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican leader, agreed. “He's the kind of person who could get confirmed. I think it's going to be challenging in any event,” Cornyn said Thursday.

Barr didn't immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages.

Barr was attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, whose state funeral was Wednesday. As Bush's top law enforcement official, he directed the investigation of the Lockerbie bombing, in which Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by terrorists connected to Libya, and led counter-terrorism efforts during the first Persian Gulf War, according to his biography at Kirkland & Ellis, where he's now a lawyer.

Barr spent 15 years in telecommunications, joining joining GTE in 1994 and staying on after it merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon Communications Inc.. He served at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 1977 and was a political appointee at the Justice Department from 1989 to 1991 before his nomination to the department's top post.

As attorney general, Barr supported the six pardons that Bush issued related to the Iran-Contra scandal, including one for former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger.

“I went over and told the president I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others,” he recalled in 2001 interview for an oral history of the Bush presidency at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

He mostly drew a hard line on crime and incarceration, arguing that the U.S. should build more prisons.

“Ask many politicians, newspaper editors, or criminal justice ‘experts' about our prisons, and you will hear that our problem is that we put too many people in prison,” the Justice Department said in a report published under Barr in 1992. “The truth, however, is to the contrary; we are incarcerating too few criminals, and the public is suffering as a result.”

In 2015, he opposed retroactive reductions of prison sentences, writing in a letter to Senate leaders with other DOJ officials that a bill to reduce sentences would “benefit dangerous criminals” now imprisoned and make them “eligible for early release.”

In his private practice, Caterpillar Inc., the iconic mining- and construction-equipment maker, hired Barr to lead a “fresh look” at the company's tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.

Barr was hired in 2017 after the IRS and other federal agencies raided the company's headquarters as part of a criminal investigation into whether the company illegally used a Swiss unit to avoid U.S. taxes. The company said in an Oct. 31 filing that it's cooperating with an ongoing grand jury investigation.

After an examination, the IRS has proposed back taxes and penalties of $2.3 billion, which the company is “vigorously contesting,” according to the filing. Barr previously declined to comment on his role in the tax dispute.

Mueller Recusal

Trump never forgave Sessions, the former Alabama senator, for recusing himself from supervising Mueller's probe, an investigation the president has repeatedly belittled as a “witch hunt.”

Barr has criticized Mueller for hiring attorneys for his team who contributed to Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton.

“In my view, prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party,” Barr told the Washington Post in July. “I would have liked to see him have more balance on this group.”

Barr has also written that former FBI Director James Comey was right to publicly announce, days before the 2016 election, that he was re-opening an investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of her emails as Secretary of State. He's also written that Trump was right to fire Comey as well as former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

Trump has come under criticism by members of Congress for naming Whitaker, Sessions's chief of staff, as the acting attorney general instead of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein appointed Mueller following Sessions's recusal, a decision that angered the president.

Senate Democrats have sued the administration over the appointment, arguing it wasn't constitutional.

The Washington Post reported earlier Barr was the front-runner for the post.

--With assistance from Steven T. Dennis, Laura Litvan, Shannon Pettypiece and David Voreacos.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu

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