Warner: Trump and ‘henchman’ Barr ‘willing to get rid of anyone’ investigating Trump associates

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the firing of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman was further evidence of Attorney General William Barr acting as “Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.”

Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he had “absolutely no idea” why Berman was fired.

“We do see this pattern where the administration uses Friday night to announce bad news,” he said.

“This is one more example of why Bill Barr has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s far more interested in being Donald trump’s personal lawyer than he is in being the attorney for the United States of America,” Warner added, noting recent reports that Berman was investigating Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

“There seems to be a pattern in this administration that the president and his henchmen, Mr. Barr, are willing to get rid of anyone that’s investigating people who get close to Donald Trump,” he said.

“There’s a pattern in this administration that the president and his henchmen, Mr. Barr, are willing to get rid of anyone that gets close to Donald Trump,” @Markwarner says of pattern of firings related to probes of the Trump organization and White Househttps://t.co/rAXl4z5P9i pic.twitter.com/leUPyGyxuw

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 21, 2020

“We’ve seen this pattern where literally six Trump-appointed intelligence officials have either been pushed out or fired because they tried to do their job of speaking truth to power,” Warner added.

Warner also addressed allegations in former White House national security adviser John Bolton’s memoir, which a federal judge ruled last week cannot be blocked from publication by the administration.

“I think John Bolton, if he wanted to tell his story, and he has such damning accusations against Donald Trump, not only vis-à-vis Ukraine but in terms of the president’s activities with [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, the Turkish leader, with the president’s activities and allegations about his conversations with President Xi of China, if John Bolton had really wanted to get this information out for reasons other than his own personal profit, he should have come and testified before the House or the Senate,” Warner added, referencing allegations in the book that Trump sought to quash investigations into Turkish and Chinese companies to curry favor with their leaders.

“If these allegations and accusations which are extraordinarily damning are true, I would think my Republican colleagues would want to have that — get him under oath as well,” @markwarner says about the possibility of getting @ambjohnbolton to testify before Congress pic.twitter.com/Lmov1Yn7PZ

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 21, 2020