President Trump called William Barr to launch investigation against Joe Biden

Listen to this article

On Tuesday, the US President Donald Trump called on Attorney General William Barr to immediately launch an investigation against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. He called Barr for the first time to investigate the Bidens. It clearly points to the nearing Nov. 3 election as a reason that Barr should not delay taking action. President delivered his words in an interview with Fox & Friends. He said, “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election”. A presidential historian at Princeton University, Julian Zelizer also suggested that Trump’s pressure campaign on Barr has moved into uncharted territory for presidential politics.

Zelizer said, “The question is, Does Barr erode the guidelines and reforms from the post-Watergate era and move forward with this? We are seeing a total politicization of the justice system in the final stages of an election”. It is noteworthy that Trump’s pressuring of Barr came after national and battleground polls show him experiencing an increasingly narrow path to reelection. Trump has repeatedly cited Hunter Biden’s past as a reason that voters can’t trust Biden in the White House. President Trump has been promoting an unconfirmed New York Post report published last week. It says an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden for arranging for him to meet Joe Biden during a 2015 visit to Washington.

Point to be noted that the Biden campaign has repeatedly rejected Trump’s allegation of wrongdoing. President Trump is trying to use all levers of power at his disposal as he struggles to gain ground on Biden. Trump and his allies had high hopes for the probe, led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham. Barr has privately expressed his frustration over the president’s public pronouncements. However, Barr is broadly in agreement with President Trump on the need to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. President Trump earlier encouraged North Carolina voters to vote twice to try to test the system, which is illegal. But, Barr declined to definitively say it was illegal, rather than saying he wasn’t familiar with the laws in every state.