Former A.G. Barr says he'd vote for Trump in 2024 despite book bashing

March 7 (UPI) -- Former Attorney General William Barr said Monday he would vote for Donald Trump if he is the 2024 Republican presidential nominee despite harshly criticizing him in his upcoming memoir.

Barr, appearing on NBC's Today, said he will vote for the Republican nominee in 2024, even if it is Trump, even though admitting the former president "went off the rails" following his 2020 election loss.

"I certainly have made it clear I don't think [Trump] should be our nominee, and I'm going to support somebody else for the nomination," Barr said in the interview.

But, he added, "because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it's inconceivable to me that I wouldn't vote for the Republican nominee."

Barr's memoir on his service as attorney general under two presidents, entitled One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, is set to be released Tuesday.

Once considered a Trump loyalist, Barr lost that role after he criticized the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots staged by Trump supporters seeking to stop the certification of President Joe Biden's victory, calling it "outrageous and despicable."

Barr has also refuted Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

In his memoir, the former attorney general recounts clashing with Trump over the White House's false claims of widespread fraud, leading to his December 2020 resignation in which he says he disputed those claims to the president's face.

"I told him that what he was saying was B.S. and that there was no basis for it," Barr recounted in Monday's interview, also admitting that he "surprised" by Trump's incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

"After the election, he went off the rails," Barr said. "He wouldn't listen to anybody except a little coterie of sycophants who were telling him what he wanted to hear."

Last week, Barr told NBC News he believes Trump was responsible "in a broad sense" for the events of Jan. 6.

"I think the whole idea was to intimidate Congress, and I think that that was wrong," Barr said.