Throughout the vast majority of his time as attorney general, William Barr subordinated himself to Trump and turned the Justice Department into Trump's personal legal team. Barr intervened on Trump's personal behalf in some cases and even tried to claim that the United States government had an interest in protecting Trump from a defamation lawsuit from one of his alleged rape victims.
But it doesn't matter. None of it mattered in the end just as it never does.
Although he's technically resigning, Trump more or less fired Barr yesterday. Barr was reportedly planning to stay until Joe Biden takes office, but Trump took it upon himself to announce his departure on Twitter.
Politico reports that refusing to cook up something about the election was Trump's final straw.
In a two-page letter that Trump also tweeted out, the attorney general didn’t explicitly say he was resigning, but said he would “spend the next week wrapping up a few remaining matters important to the Administration and depart on Dec. 23.”
Trump had grown so frustrated with Barr that he was considering firing him, but had not decided by Friday whether to do so, a friend of the president’s said. Trump remained angry about the attorney general's remarks that the Justice Department had found no evidence of major election fraud, the associate added.
Over the past few days, Trump continued to criticize Barr both publicly and privately.
It is almost certainly not a coincidence that Trump shoved Barr out the door almost immediately after the electoral college voted to install Joe Biden as the next president. Politico also reports that Trump was angered by Barr's failure to find any voter fraud and angered by his decision not to reveal the existence of an investigation into Hunter Biden before the election.
If Barr had revealed the investigation before the election, it probably wouldn't have made any difference at all, but Trump is going to make every excuse he can possibly come up with to explain his loss. Because you're not really a loser if you were cheated, right? That's Trump's story and he's sticking to it. He's not a loser if he never concedes; if he blames his loss on the failures of those around him rather than himself.
In my opinion, William Barr was Trump's worst cabinet member; a man who made his even predecessor Jeff fucking Sessions look like a responsible public servant. It was Barr who squashed the Mueller investigation and report. It was Barr who sent squads of federal rent-a-thugs to gas and beat protestors in multiple cities.
Barr did almost everything Trump wanted but everyone who works with Trump is eventually humiliated.