OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
One of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics since he left office believes he will face another indictment this summer.
In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” former Attorney General William Barr said he thinks Trump will be charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Co-host Robert Costa asked, “Trump was indicted and arraigned in the records case. Do you believe is a target, potentially in the January 6 case?”
Barr responded: “Yes. And, by the way, I defended him on cases that I think are unfair, like the one up in New York and so forth. I think the January 6 case will be a hard case to make because of First Amendment interest. But I am actually beginning to think they will pull the trigger on that. I would expect it to be this summer.
“Because of the First Amendment interests, we don’t want to get in a position where people can’t complain about an election,” he noted further. “I am more skeptical of that case, but I think it is likely it will be brought.”
Earlier in the week, Sen. Marco Rubio declared that because President Joe Biden opted to allow his Justice Department to indict former President Donald Trump, he opened the door for reprisals from a future GOP president.
“You think this ends here? The next Republican president is going to be under tremendous pressure to bring charges and indict Joe Biden, his family, his crackhead son, whoever,” Rubio said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News. “The pressure is going to be extraordinary.”
His comments came as Trump was en route to a federal courthouse in Miami to be arraigned following a 37-count indictment from special counsel Jack Smith, who U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed to investigate the former president’s handling of classified documents.
Rubio went on to say that the country has undergone a “cultural hysteria” in the decades following the end of the Cold War, when the U.S. became the sole superpower in a “unipolar” world, suggesting the country frittered away its status and clout by moving manufacturing off-shore while allowing the left to destroy traditions like two-parent families and safe neighborhoods.
“I mean, we can do whatever we want, can be as decadent as we want in our society, in our culture,” Rubio said. “We can break our politics. We can take our institutions and weaponize them for political purposes on both sides.”
“And now reality is catching up, and it’s hurting us badly,” he said. “And today is frankly just a symptom of a much bigger problem which we’ll talk about here, and that is we no longer live in that world.”
Earlier, he said, “These documents of this nature don’t belong at Biden’s garage, they don’t belong on Hillary Clinton’s server, they don’t belong at Mar-a-Lago, but there’s no allegation here, even if you read the indictment nowhere does it say ‘and as a result, the national security of the United States was harmed in this way.
“And you have to weigh that with an indictment that now is going to put our country already divided and polarized country in a really dangerous place,” he added. “Because now all of our institutions are being undermined, now the whole country, we’re watching this spectacle play out, and it will for the next year and a half. Not to mention, there are real questions about whether the president can get a fair shake here.
“I know there are people in the press that are giddy about it. Democrats and partisans are giddy about it, but this is really bad for America, this indictment,” he continued. “It was a bad decision to bring it. I don’t think it was justified or merited, and we’re gonna pay a terrible price for it. This is not just a former president. This is, as of today, the likeliest opponent to the sitting president in the next election.”
