Trump weighs firing Barr over fraud comments and Durham delay
03 December 2020
Attorney General Barr may be fired or resign, as President Trump seethes about Barr's statement this week that no widespread voter fraud has been found.
Behind the scenes: A source familiar with the president's thinking tells Axios that Trump remains frustrated with what he sees as the lack of a vigorous investigation into his election conspiracy theories.
- That combines with what he perceives as the slow-walking of a report by special counsel John Durham into the 2016 investigation of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia under the Obama administration.
Those two factors have resulted in the very real possibility that Barr is either fired or quits, with just 48 days left in Trump's term.
Reality check ... One reason Trump might not follow through: It's not obvious which government employee would be willing to go further than Barr in satisfying what even some in Trump's inner orbit consider to be unreasonable demands.
- It’s not like he can pull in Rudy Giuliani to run the Justice Department for six weeks.
Go deeper: Sidney Powell's conspiracy theories blow back on Trump's White House
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.