Attorney General William Barr accused congressional Democrats of “sabotaging” the Trump administration by implying that the government in power is illegitimate.
“I deeply admire the American presidency as a political and constitutional institution,” Barr said during a Federalist Society dinner in Washington, DC, Friday night. “Unfortunately over the past several decades, we have seen a steady encroachment on executive authority by the other branches of the government.”
Barr said the Democrats’ constant attempts to derail Trump administration appointees have done nothing but “incapacitate” the executive branch.
“Immediately after President Trump won the election, opponents inaugurated what they called the ‘resistance,’ and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the executive branch and his administration,” Barr said.
“The cost of this constant harassment is real,” he continued.
Barr claimed that while Trump’s presidency is anything but normal, the public knew what to expect.
“The fact is, that, yes, while the president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and punctilio, he was upfront about what he was going to do and the people decided that he was going to serve as president,” he said.
Barr’s comments came on the same day the House Intelligence Committee held its second day of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry.
Trump has been caught up in an impeachment inquiry over allegations that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.