WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General William Barr was interviewed privately Thursday by the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an official familiar with the meeting said.
The deposition under oath in Washington lasted about two hours, according to the official, who asked not to be identified because the session wasn’t public.
One of the committee’s interests in Barr is his interactions with former President Donald Trump. Barr has said he told Trump after he lost the 2020 election that his claims of widespread voter fraud were not true.
Barr has become more openly critical of Trump since leaving office. He rejected any claim that fraud affected the 2020 results, and wrote in a recently published memoir that Trump “lost his grip” after losing.
Barr told NBC’s Lester Holt in a March interview that after he told Trump that election-fraud claims were false, Trump got “very angry about this.” When he offered to resign, Barr said Trump slapped the desk and said, “Accepted!”
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, had previously said the panel was in contact with Barr. Barr was attorney general under Trump from 2019 to 2020, succeeding Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
The Wall Street Journal reported the interview with Barr earlier.
