Bill Barr criticizes NY AG for ‘overreach’ in going after Trump’s children

Former Attorney General William Barr said a decision by New York’s attorney general to sue former President Trump and his three adult children for business fraud constitutes prosecutorial overreach.

“It’s hard for me not to conclude that this is a political hit job,” Barr said Wednesday during an appearance on Fox News. “I’m not even sure that she has a good case against Trump himself, but what ultimately persuades me that this is a political hit job is that she grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into this.”

Trump’s adult children did have roles in the former president’s businesses, Barr said, “but this is his personal financial statement, prepared by the CFO, accounting firms were involved in it. … The children aren’t going to know the details of that, nor are they expected in the real world to do their own due diligence and have it reviewed independently.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James D) earlier on Wednesday announced a lawsuit in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan against Trump and his businesses after a three-year-long investigation into whether the former president’s company misled investors and tax authorities by inflating property values to investors and subsequently deflating them for tax and loan benefits.

James accused Trump of falsely inflating his net worth “by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us.”

Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were subpoenaed along with their father and sat for depositions earlier this year.

Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, said such an “overreach” by James would “end up backfiring” because “it will make people more sympathetic to Trump.”

Since leaving Trump’s administration, Barr has emerged as a sometimes critical figure of his former boss, earlier this month appearing on Fox News to say the Justice Department likely has a strong case that Trump improperly took classified documents from the White House when he left office amid an ongoing investigation into that matter.