Barr says Trump isn’t ‘legally responsible’ for Jan. 6 and taking classified documents

Former Attorney General William Barr said he believes former President Donald Trump is morally responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol but isn’t legally culpable.

NBC News’ Lester Holt asked Barr whether he considered Trump “responsible” for the violence at the Capitol, Barr said: “I do think he was responsible in the broad sense of that word, in that it appears that part of the plan was to send this group up to the Hill. I think the whole idea was to intimidate Congress. And I think that that was wrong.”

But, he added, he hasn’t seen evidence that Trump committed an actual crime. “I haven’t seen anything to say he was legally responsible for it in terms of incitement,” Barr said.

Barr was interviewed by Holt for a primetime special airing Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. Barr was also asked whether he would have investigated the former president over classified documents that the National Archives said were taken to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office.

“To tell you the truth, I probably wouldn’t,” Barr said. He suggested that Trump’s having made off with the documents was probably not illegal. “The whole classification system is done under executive order. It’s the president. The president decides everything,” Barr said.

Barr’s new book “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” which documents his time in The White House, will be released soon. Trump referred to the book as “fake” and dubbed Barr a “coward” and a “big disappointment.”