‘You’re a star’: Bill Barr congratulated lawyer after Trump impeachment hearing

Justice Department releases trove of text messages from Barr’s time in Trump administration

Bill Barr congratulated then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone as former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial was close to its end.

While serving as attorney general in the Trump administration from February 2019 to December 2020, Mr Barr texted Mr Cipollone on 30 January 2020: “You are a STAR.”

Mr Barr sent the message after the Trump legal team had finished their arguments against convicting and removing Mr Trump during the trial in the Senate, a trove of text messages released by the Department of Justice this week show.

Charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the House had voted to impeach Mr Trump on 18 December 2019. The charges stemmed from an effort lasting months in which the Trump administration pressured the Ukrainian government led by former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in an attempt to harm Mr Biden’s chances of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

To incentivize the launch of investigations into the Bidens, Mr Trump ordered that $400m of military aid be withheld from Ukraine, which has been in an armed conflict with Russia-backed forces since 2014. Mr Trump also used the prospect of a meeting at the White House as a possible reward for investigating the Bidens. A phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky on 25 July 2019 later prompted the beginning of the impeachment proceedings. At the time, Mr Zelensky was fresh in the job, having just been inaugurated in May 2019.

Mr Trump legal team argued during the impeachment trial, the first of two judging the conduct of Mr Trump, that the charges were unconstitutional and that they should have been thrown out.

While Mr Barr praised Mr Cipollone, many observers said at the time that the Trump team’s performance at the trial was lacking in proper evidence and used exaggeration and misinformation to make their case for acquittal.

Mr Cipollone claimed that the impeachment was an “effort to overturn” the 2016 election as well as an attempt to “interfere” with the upcoming 2020 election despite the Constitution handing the House the “sole power to impeach” a president over treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanours.

Mr Barr became notorious for his forceful defences of Mr Trump, who often called Mr Barr “my attorney general”. But the relationship took a turn for the worse when Mr Barr refused to go along with Mr Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

Mr Barr told reporters in December 2020 that the Department of Justice had not found any evidence that would indicate widespread voter fraud. He resigned just two weeks later on 23 December 2020 as Mr Trump continued to try to force the department to try to get states with slim vote margins not certify Mr Biden’s victory.

Mr Trump was impeached and acquitted a second time after the Capitol riot on 6 January when a pro-Trump mob stormed Congress to try to stop the certification of Mr Biden’s election win.