Trump is reportedly 'livid' at Barr, has discussed terminating him

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump is so mad at Attorney General William Barr that a senior administration official told The Washington Post there's a chance Barr could soon be fired.

Trump is "livid" for a multitude of reasons, including the fact that Barr told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he has not seen any voter fraud "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." Trump spent time on Wednesday complaining about Barr, officials familiar with the matter told the Post, and several people close to the president are working to convince Trump not to fire the attorney general.

One senior administration official told the Post it's possible Trump is even angrier that U.S. Attorney John Durham did not make public before the election whether he determined that law enforcement committed any crimes while investigating ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. In October, Barr secretly appointed Durham a special counsel, which gives him more legal and political protection when President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Durham's public inaction has angered Trump, people familiar with the matter told the Post, and is one reason why his relationship with Barr has been frosty for months.

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Barr has been fiercely loyal to Trump, and before the election, he tried to cast doubt on mail-in voting, arguing it would be vulnerable to fraud. A person close to Barr told the Post he decided to talk to AP because "he has to leave, and he does not want there to be questions about whether the department was sitting idly by under his watch with respect to investigating fraud."

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.