From 1971 to 1977, William Barr was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
146 Facts About William Barr
2.
William Barr then served as a law clerk to judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
3.
From 1994 to 2008, William Barr did corporate legal work for GTE and its successor company Verizon Communications, which made him a multimillionaire.
4.
From 2009 to 2018, William Barr served on the board of directors for Time Warner.
5.
William Barr is a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of nearly unfettered presidential authority over the executive branch of the US government.
6.
William Barr became attorney general for the second time in 2019.
7.
On December 1,2020, William Barr stated FBI and Justice Department investigations found no evidence of irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election.
8.
William Barr's father was raised Jewish but later converted to the Roman Catholic Church.
9.
William Barr was the second of four sons, and his younger brother Stephen William Barr is a professor of physics at the University of Delaware.
10.
William Barr was an active member in the Sigma Nu fraternity.
11.
William Barr did two additional years of graduate study at Columbia, receiving a Master of Arts in government and Chinese studies in 1973.
12.
William Barr graduated in 1977 with a Juris Doctor with highest honors.
13.
William Barr worked for the CIA from 1971 to 1977 while attending graduate school and law school.
14.
William Barr was first hired as a summer intern for two years.
15.
William Barr was known as a strong defender of presidential power.
16.
William Barr wrote an advisory opinion justifying the US invasion of Panama and arrest of Manuel Noriega.
17.
William Barr wrote legal justifications for the practice of rendition, so that the FBI could enter onto foreign soil without the consent of the host government to apprehend fugitives wanted by the United States government for terrorism or drug-trafficking.
18.
William Barr declined a congressional request for the full 1989 opinion, but instead provided a document that "summarizes the principal conclusions".
19.
In May 1990, William Barr was appointed Deputy Attorney General, the official responsible for day-to-day management of the department.
20.
Three days after William Barr accepted that position, 121 Cuban inmates, awaiting deportation to Cuba, seized nine hostages at the Talladega federal prison.
21.
William Barr directed the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team to assault the prison, which resulted in rescuing all hostages without loss of life.
22.
William Barr enjoyed a "sterling reputation" among Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
23.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden, though disagreeing with William Barr, responded that it was the "first candid answer" he had heard from a nominee on a question that witnesses would normally evade; Biden hailed William Barr as "a throwback to the days when we actually had attorneys general that would talk to you".
24.
William Barr was approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, was confirmed by voice vote by the full Senate, and was sworn in as attorney general on November 26,1991.
25.
William Barr was described as affable with a dry, self-deprecating wit.
26.
In 1992, William Barr authored a report, The Case for More Incarceration, which argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate, the creation of a national program to construct more prisons, and the abolition of parole release.
27.
William Barr argued that incarceration reduced crime, pointing to crime and incarceration rates in 1960,1970,1980 and 1990.
28.
In October 1991, William Barr appointed then-retired Democratic Chicago judge Nicholas Bua as special counsel in the Inslaw scandal.
29.
In October 1992, Barr appointed then retired New Jersey federal judge Frederick B Lacey to investigate the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency handling of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Iraqgate scandal.
30.
Several sources have alleged that the CIA had been aware of BCCI's activities and its purchase of First American, but since the CIA, DIA, and the NSC utilized BCCI accounts for covert operations and since the Saudi's provided intelligence to the CIA from BCCI's illicit activities, the CIA worked with William Barr to prevent any investigation of BCCI, which was directed by Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller since 1986.
31.
In 1992, William Barr launched a surveillance program to gather records of innocent Americans' international phone calls.
32.
William Barr was consulted extensively regarding the pardons, and especially advocated for pardoning Weinberger.
33.
William Barr responded that he believed Bush had made the right decision regarding that and he felt people in the case had been treated unfairly.
34.
William Barr said Walsh was a "head-hunter" who "had completely lost perspective".
35.
William Barr has been described as a "leader of the parole-abolition campaign" in Virginia.
36.
William Barr expressed his opposition to efforts to end mandatory minimum sentencing.
37.
In 1994, William Barr became Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the telecommunications company GTE Corporation, where he served for 14 years.
38.
In 2000, when GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon Communications, William Barr became the general counsel and executive vice president of Verizon until he retired in 2008.
39.
William Barr became a multimillionaire from working in GTE and Verizon.
40.
From 2009 to 2018, William Barr served on the board of directors for Time Warner.
41.
In March 1998, William Barr lambasted the Clinton administration for criticizing Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation of the Whitewater controversy, which had shifted towards an investigation of an alleged affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
42.
In 2017, William Barr said there was "nothing inherently wrong" with Donald Trump's calls for investigating Hillary Clinton while the two were both running for president.
43.
William Barr added that an investigation into an alleged Uranium One controversy was more warranted than looking into whether Trump conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 elections.
44.
William Barr said in 2017 that he did not think "all this stuff" about incarcerating or prosecuting Hillary Clinton was appropriate to say, but added that "there are things that should be investigated that haven't been investigated," although the FBI began investigating the Clinton Foundation and the related Uranium One matter in 2015, followed by investigations by Republican congressional committees.
45.
In February 2017, William Barr argued Trump was justified in firing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates over her refusal to defend Executive Order 13769.
46.
In June 2018, William Barr sent an unsolicited 20-page memo to senior Justice Department officials.
47.
William Barr provided copies to members of Trump's legal team and discussed it with some of them.
48.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee financially assists Republicans in their Senate election contests; in the seven years from 2009 to 2016, William Barr gave six donations to the NRSC totaling $85,400.
49.
When William Barr started donating more frequently to the NRSC, it was uncertain whether then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions would remain in his job.
50.
William Barr continued donating even after Sessions resigned, and after Trump nominated William Barr for Attorney General.
51.
The donations stopped after William Barr was confirmed by the Senate as attorney general.
52.
Later that day, William Barr was sworn in as the nation's 85th Attorney General by Chief Justice John Roberts in a ceremony at the White House.
53.
William Barr is the first person to be appointed to a second non-consecutive term as attorney general since John J Crittenden in 1850.
54.
William Barr had enthusiastically supported Trump's political agenda, misrepresented aspects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, repeated Trump's assertion that those investigating Trump had engaged in spying, defied congressional subpoenas, and refused to give Congress an unredacted version of the Mueller report.
55.
On May 1,2019, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told the House Oversight Committee that William Barr had instructed Justice Department official John Gore to refuse a subpoena to testify in front of the committee.
56.
Also in July 2019, William Barr reportedly made the decision to not bring federal civil rights charges against New York policeman Daniel Pantaleo for causing the death of Eric Garner.
57.
On July 25,2019, William Barr reinstated the death penalty for federal crimes.
58.
William Barr later announced that Justice Department officials were investigating "serious irregularities" at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
59.
In mid-August 2019, William Barr had a rare face-to-face meeting with Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who since earlier that year represented former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Dmytry Firtash as attorneys.
60.
In October 2019, as Trump faced an impeachment inquiry about the Trump-Ukraine scandal, William Barr met with Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch at his Manhattan home.
61.
Trump reportedly directed William Barr to meet with Murdoch, and it was not immediately known what the men discussed, but CNN media analyst Brian Stelter wrote in his 2020 book about Fox News that silencing Napolitano was among the topics discussed.
62.
In early June 2020, according to reporting by The Washington Post and Fox News, William Barr personally ordered that the streets around Lafayette Square, Washington, DC should be cleared so that Trump, William Barr and other administration officials could stage a photo op in front of St John's Church.
63.
At the time, the streets were occupied by peaceful protesters as part of the George Floyd protests in Washington, DC; William Barr's order resulted in federal law enforcement officers rushing protesters, and employing smoke canisters, pepper balls, riot shields, and batons against the protesters.
64.
William Barr reacted to the incident by falsely claiming that pepper balls were not chemical irritants.
65.
William Barr repeated a claim that foreign adversaries could flood the country with counterfeit ballots to disrupt the election, a threat that experts characterized as nearly impossible to execute.
66.
In mid-June 2020, William Barr announced that Geoffrey Berman, the court-appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, "is stepping down".
67.
Simultaneously, William Barr announced that at his recommendation, Trump had appointed Craig Carpenito as the interim SDNY US Attorney, in a departure from the tradition of a career prosecutor from SDNY taking the interim role.
68.
Also concurrently, William Barr said that Trump would nominate Jay Clayton for the permanent role of SDNY US Attorney.
69.
William Barr then informed Berman that Trump had fired Berman at William Barr's request.
70.
William Barr has made commentary about social and religious issues in speeches and television appearances.
71.
Homeland Security Department secretary Chad Wolf said in September 2020 that he and William Barr had discussed arresting leaders of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement.
72.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2020 that William Barr told federal prosecutors to consider charging violent protestors with plotting to overthrow the US government.
73.
William Barr has sometimes supported controversial or false statements made by Trump.
74.
William Barr's claim appeared to be based on months-old social media rumors.
75.
Two days later, William Barr asserted he knew that antifa activists "are flying around the country" and "we are following them".
76.
William Barr sent a memo to DOJ prosecutors authorizing them to investigate "vote tabulation irregularities" before voting results had been certified, a reversal of long-standing department policy.
77.
William Barr waited until December 1,2020, to state that the Justice Department "has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election".
78.
Trump was angered by news that William Barr had followed Justice Department policy by not disclosing during the campaign that Joe Biden's son Hunter had since 2018 been under criminal investigation, initially on suspicion of money laundering but later for tax matters.
79.
On December 14,2020, Trump announced on Twitter that William Barr was stepping down from his post on December 23.
80.
On December 21,2020, William Barr announced federal charges against Mohammed Abouagela Masud for building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.
81.
William Barr had taken an interest in solving that case, both during and between his tenures as attorney general.
82.
In May 2021, federal judge Beryl Howell unsealed documents showing that in November 2020 the William Barr DOJ persuaded a grand jury to subpoena Twitter for information to identify who operated a parody Twitter account, @NunesAlt, that mocked Republican congressman and ardent Trump ally Devin Nunes.
83.
Jackson stated that email evidence showed that the William Barr letter was "the priority, and it is getting completed first" ahead of the advice memo.
84.
William Barr clarified on the intention of his letter both in his phone call with Mueller and in another letter to Congress that his letter had not been intended to be a summary of the report, but rather a description of the principal findings of the report.
85.
The New York Times reported instances in which the William Barr letter omitted information and quoted sentence fragments out of context in ways that significantly altered the Mueller findings, including:.
86.
William Barr said it would not be criminal obstruction of justice for a president to instruct a staffer to lie to investigators about the president's actions, and suggested a president could legally terminate an investigation into himself if he was being "falsely accused".
87.
Previously in April 2019, William Barr said that his decision to not charge Trump was made "in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other department lawyers".
88.
William Barr later said he was not sure what spying had occurred and he did clarify what he meant by "spying".
89.
William Barr said he thought there was not "any pejorative connotation at all" to the term spying.
90.
At the time, William Barr said he would not launch an investigation into the origins of the FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
91.
Also in May 2019, William Barr appointed John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, to oversee a DOJ probe into the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference.
92.
In September 2019, William Barr was reported to have been contacting foreign governments to ask for help in this inquiry, including personally traveling to the United Kingdom and Italy to seek information.
93.
William Barr sought information related to a conspiracy theory that had circulated among Trump allies in conservative media asserting Joseph Mifsud was a Western intelligence operative who was allegedly directed to entrap Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos in order to establish a false predicate for the FBI to open an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
94.
The Post subsequently reported in December 2019 that William Barr disagreed with the inspector general's conclusion that there was adequate evidence for the FBI to open its investigation.
95.
William Barr rejected criticism by Democrats in Congress that the transitioned investigation was designed to provide support to Trump during his impeachment inquiry in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.
96.
William Barr rejected the conclusions of the report, declaring that the investigation was started "on the thinnest of suspicions that, in [his] view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken".
97.
In December 2019, William Barr claimed in an interview with NBC News that the Russia investigation was "completely baseless" and said he believed the FBI's investigation may have been conducted in "bad faith".
98.
In January 2020, William Barr prohibited the start of counterintelligence investigations related to presidential campaigns unless both the attorney general and head of the FBI signed off on those investigations.
99.
In defense of the firing, William Barr allegedly made numerous false claims about Atkinson's actions during his tenure.
100.
William Barr hinted in June 2020 that the Durham investigation would produce results regarding the "complete collapse of the Russiagate scandal" before the end of the summer.
101.
On September 18,2020, four chairs of Democratic committees asked the DOJ inspector general to open an emergency investigation because "We are concerned by indications that Attorney General William Barr might depart from longstanding DOJ principles to take public action related to US Attorney Durham's investigation that could impact the presidential election," adding that William Barr's public comments may have already violated that policy.
102.
William Barr reportedly raised doubts multiple times about the validity of the charges against Cohen, including requesting the Office of Legal Counsel to draft a memo with legal arguments which could have helped Cohen's case.
103.
William Barr's efforts were reportedly stemmed by the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York.
104.
William Barr affirmed that he had made the decision in the Stone case to change the sentencing memo.
105.
William Barr said Trump had not asked him to step in, but noted that Trump's tweets and public comments make it impossible for the attorney general to do his job.
106.
William Barr's comments followed criticism of the department for its poor handling of the sentencing of Roger Stone after DOJ actions seen as favorable to Trump and his allies.
107.
William Barr chose St Louis's chief federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Jensen, to conduct the review.
108.
The Justice Department announced in May 2020 that the charges against Flynn would be dropped, with Jensen stating that William Barr had agreed with his recommendation.
109.
William Barr said that from this case, he wanted to show Americans that "there's only one standard of justice," instead of two standards of justice.
110.
William Barr stated that John Durham, whom Barr had appointed to investigate the origins of the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation, had been examining the unmasking issue.
111.
William Barr's firing of Geoffrey Berman was widely condemned, given that the Southern District of New York was actively pursuing criminal investigations into several persons and companies associated with President Donald Trump and The Trump Organization.
112.
William Barr's conduct was seen as sacrificing the independence of the Department of Justice to protect Trump and his allies.
113.
In June 2019, in violation of Department of Justice policy, William Barr pressured Berman, then the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to drop an investigation into close allies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan involved with the Turkish bank Halkbank.
114.
William Barr's demand followed a concerted pressure campaign by Erdogan and his close associates, including his son-in-law, Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, and Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, a Trump family friend involved in developing the Trump towers in Turkey; Erdogan himself personally insisted to President Trump that the Halkbank investigation be shut down on at least two occasions, November 1,2018, at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, and on a telephone call on December 14,2018.
115.
Berman learned of this through press reports and declined to resign; the next day, William Barr asked Trump to fire Berman, which he promptly did.
116.
On December 14,2020, Trump announced via Twitter that William Barr would be resigning from his post as attorney general, effective December 23.
117.
William Barr further confirmed his resignation in a letter to Trump on the same day.
118.
William Barr made decisions that dovetailed precisely with Mr Trump's wishes and the demands of his political allies.
119.
On June 1,2022, William Barr was interviewed on Fox News about the verdict in the failed prosecution of Michael Sussman.
120.
William Barr asserted Durham "exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly use this information to start an investigation of Trump," though the Sussmann case did not relate to how the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation began.
121.
William Barr testified to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack behind closed doors on June 2,2022.
122.
William Barr has supported the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and its investigation into the handling of presidential documents by Trump after his presidency, and dismissed Trump's calls for a special master to be appointed.
123.
Actions William Barr took in the Roger Stone case led to an outcry from a bipartisan group of more than 2,000 former DOJ employees, who called on William Barr to resign.
124.
Bush presidency, asserted that William Barr "poses the greatest threat, in my lifetime, to our rule of law and to public trust in it".
125.
Three months later, Ayer claimed William Barr "is on a mission to install the president as an autocrat".
126.
William Barr advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected individuals from claiming asylum in the United States.
127.
William Barr advocated a Bush-backed bill that would have expanded the types of crime that could be punished by execution.
128.
On July 25,2019, William Barr announced that the United States federal government would resume its use of capital punishment under his leadership, after nearly two decades without an execution.
129.
William Barr ordered the Department of Justice to adopt a new lethal injection protocol, consisting of a single drug, and ordered execution dates to be set for five inmates in December 2019 and January 2020.
130.
William Barr has been attributed as playing a key role in the administration's execution spree.
131.
In 1991, Barr said he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion, that Roe v Wade was thus wrongly decided, and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators".
132.
However, William Barr said during his 1991 confirmation hearings that Roe was "the law of the land" and that he did not have "fixed or settled views" on the subject.
133.
William Barr donated $55,000 to a political action committee that backed Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and $2,700 to Donald Trump during the general election campaign.
134.
William Barr is a proponent of the unitary executive theory, which holds that the President has broad executive powers.
135.
In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, William Barr said he rejected the view "that the law enforcement system is systemically racist".
136.
In September 2020, William Barr suggested bringing Sedition charges against disruptive looters and rioters, a legal tool that is rarely used by the United States government.
137.
Such suggestions have brought fears that William Barr is politicizing the US Justice Department and, if enacted, would mean that the Justice Department could prosecute individuals based on political speech.
138.
In July 2020, William Barr condemned large American tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple, and Hollywood studios, accusing them of "kowtowing" to the Chinese Communist Party for the sake of profits.
139.
William Barr has been married to Christine Moynihan William Barr since 1973.
140.
William Barr holds a master's degree in library science, and together they have three daughters: Mary Barr Daly, Patricia Barr Straughn, and Margaret Barr.
141.
William Barr's husband continued to work in the Justice Department's National Security Division.
142.
William Barr is a Roman Catholic and is a member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
143.
William Barr served from 2014 to 2017 on the board of the Catholic Information Center of the Archdiocese of Washington, an Opus Dei center and nexus of politically connected Catholics on K Street.
144.
William Barr began playing at age eight and has performed competitively in Scotland with a major American pipe band.
145.
At one time, William Barr was a member of the City of Washington Pipe Band.
146.
William Barr is the brother of Stephen William Barr, a physics professor at the University of Delaware.