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Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Former President Donald Trump on Friday rebuked Bill Barr on Friday, after his former attorney general defended the FBI search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform, claimed Friday that Barr was "fired" long before the former president left the White House after Barr went on Fox News to defend the FBI's search of Trump's residence in Florida last month.
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"Bill Barr had 'no guts' and got 'no glory.' He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as AG but faded fast -- didn't have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!"
Barr, the attorney general under Donald Trump, on Friday defended the FBI search of the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida last month.
Barr appeared on the Fox News show "America Reports" where he was asked to comment on Trump's push for an outside expert, known as a special master, to review the trove of documents seized from the Winter White House.
"The idea of a special master is a bit of a red herring. The only documents that have been taken that seem to me that there's a legitimate concern about keeping away from the government and insulating the government from would be documents related to his private lawyer communications," Barr said.
Barr said that it is fine for authorities to identify such documents but that "there doesn't appear to be much" of them in the seized documents that a special master isn't needed to identify them.
"What people are missing is that all other documents taken, even if they claim to be executive privilege, either belong to the government because they're government records," Barr said.
"Even if they're classified, even if they're subject to executive privilege - they still belong to the government and go to the National Archives."
Barr added that any other documents that were seized "like news clippings and other things that were in the boxes containing the classified information" were "seize-able under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held."
"So I think it's a red herring and I think at this stage, since they've already gone through the documents, that it's a waste of time," Barr said of appointing the special master.
Barr said he "can't think of a legitimate reason" why the documents could have been taken out of the government.
"I frankly am skeptical of this claim that 'I declassified everything.' You know? Because frankly, I think it's highly improbable," Barr said.
"Second, if he in fact stood over scores of boxes not really knowing what was in them and said, 'I hereby declassify everything in here,' that would be such an abuse and show such recklessness that it's almost worse than taking the documents."
Barr also criticized comments from those who call the FBI raid "unprecedented."
"People say that this is unprecedented, but it's also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put it in a country club," Barr said."How long is the government going to try and get that back?" Barr added.
"The facts are starting to show that they were being jerked around."
Barr previously broke from his former boss in recorded testimony played before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"He went off on a monologue saying that there was now definitive evidence involving fraud through the Dominion machines," Barr said in the testimony regarding alleged voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
"I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff he has become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff."
Barr also shot down Trump's claims of significant fraud that would change the election results in his favor, and he noted that even if courts threw out votes as fraudulent, it would not mean that the results would change.
Barr's comments came as a judge on Friday released a more detailed list of what was found when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, and it includes thousands of classified and other documents.
