- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Idea Stream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (indistinct conversation) (bell dings) - Hello, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, May 5th, and I'm Becky Rupert McMahon, Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, and our fundraising arm, the Bar Foundation.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the CMBA.

(applause) Thank you.

Our 150th anniversary is a remarkable milestone that has been made possible by the inspiration and literal perspiration of thousands of lawyers, judges, law students, paralegals, and business professionals, who, over the course of 15 decades, have coalesced around a central mission, promoting the rule of law and the legal profession.

For years, the Cleveland Bar has partnered with our friends at the City Club, to present a conversation of consequence that ties into the annual Law Day theme established by the American Bar Association.

This year, our theme is Cornerstones of Democracy, Civics, Civility, and Collaboration.

At the CMBA, we believe so strongly in the importance of Law Day that we expanded it again this year to encompass a full week of programs spotlighting the rule of law, people who work tirelessly to advance the rule of law, and institutions that exist to uphold the rule of law.

As a nonpartisan organization comprised of nearly 5,000 members, the CMBA strives to include and uplift diverse perspectives in all that we do.

That's particularly true when our subject matter leans political in nature.

In an era when too many people retreat to their own ideologies and refuse to listen, let alone consider information to the contrary, the CMBA remains committed to bringing people of different viewpoints, political persuasions, and experiences, together for civil, constructive dialogue.

Thanks to the connection provided by a long-term member and leader of the CMBA Judge Jim McMonagle.

Judge McMonagle, thank you.

I am pleased to introduce this year's Law Week Friday Forum, a conversation with the former Attorney General to the United States, William Pellum Barr.

(applause) Now, very few people, very few have the kind of legal experience that Mr. Barr does.

Raised in New York, Mr. Barr earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University, followed by a JD with highest honors from the George Washington University Law School.

He then secured a prestigious clerkship at the US Court of Appeals for District of Columbia, spent a decade in private practice with the Washington DC based Shaw, Pittman, Pots and Trobridge, and then in 1990, joined the Justice Department as Deputy Attorney General.

A year later, president George HW Bush, a past speaker, I believe here at the City Club, appointed Mr. Barr to serve as the 77th Attorney General for the United States, a position that he held until the end of 1993.

For the next 25 years, Mr. Barr held a variety of roles, including general counsel for GTE and Verizon, followed by several years at Kirkland and Ellis.

In 2019, president Donald J. Trump called on Mr. Barr to return to public service again this time as the 85th Attorney General for the United States.

Two highlights of Mr. Barr's second tenure as AG include his handling of the Special Counsel investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election, and his resignation in December, 2020, when he refused to support President Trump's efforts to overturn the election based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Given the breadth and length of his career, Mr. Barr brings a unique point of view on the rule of law and the functioning in the Executive branch.

He lays much of this out in his 2022 book, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General."

The book's title comes from the words one of Mr. Barr's predecessors used to describe the role of AG.

The book hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was described by the Wall Street Journal as quote, "substantive and brilliant."

Of course, there are others who would describe the book differently.

(laughing) And therein lies our opportunity for our civil, constructive dialogue today.

Our conversation with Mr. Barr will be moderated by City Club CEO, happy 10th anniversary, CEO Dan, and also a member of the CMBA Dan Bolthrup.

If you have a question for Mr. Barr, please text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet your questions to @theCityClub, and the diligent City Club staff will try to work your question into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the CMBA and the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming the former Attorney General for the United States of America, William P. Barr.

(applause) - You want us- yes, you can say whatever you want.

- How honored I am to be here.

If we're gonna make it as a country, we have to have a lot more civil discourse in this country.

(applause) And that's what this club is all about.

And I really feel honored to be part of the program today.

And I wanna thank my good friend, 30 year friend, Judge Jim McMonagle for asking me here, and his colleagues from VREs, and my friends from Jones Day, including several with whom I've worked in the government.

And finally, you may not know this, but after I said that, I didn't see any sign of election fraud all over the internet was this story that I had been paid a lot of money over the years by Dominion.

(audience laughing) Well, it was Dominion Energy.

Who's who is here today.

So- - Just thank you for cleaning that up.

It's very much in the news today.

- Typical.

Typical, yeah.

- Well, welcome.

Welcome to Cleveland.

Welcome back to Cleveland.

I know you've been here many times before.

Sir, I wanted to start by asking why you felt it important to write this book, "One Damn Thing After Another," and then secondarily, is it truly one damn thing after another?

(audience laughing) - Well, I had no intention of writing a book.

I actually never really liked the idea of writing a book once you've been in government.

So I had no intention of doing it.

Didn't keep any notes, didn't take any papers with me.

It was sort of a- (audience laughing) That I can talk about.

But anyway, and, but I got a full court press from my publisher.

A number of people called me saying, look, you know, you have a very unique perspective.

People are gonna be interested in hearing, you worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House.

You work for George HW Bush at Justice.

And then this president who's quite an unusual figure.

And people are gonna be very interested in that.

And I allowed them to gajul me into it.

They came in with a preemptive and, you know, a nice financial offer.

But I also just sat down and wrote a story, you know, wrote a chapter to see, am I gonna like this?

This is before I agreed to do it.

And I had fun.

And then I agreed to do it, and signed the contract.

And then it wasn't fun, you know, it was a job.

But, so I didn't, I just, and the other part of it was a little bit of therapy, really.

I mean, I enjoyed thinking about it and trying to put things in context and sort of looking back over my career.

It was an interesting process.

- The last portion of your government career as Attorney General in the Trump administration.

Just the way you describe it, I can understand why you might have felt that you needed a little therapy after.

(audience laughing) - Well, yeah.

So, you know, as people probably know, I did not, I'm a lifelong Republican, and I did not support Trump for the nomination.

I supported Jeb Bush, and then when he dropped out, I supported Rubio.

But I was never a never Trumper.

And I thought the country needed a Republican administration.

And so I supported Trump once he became the nominee.

And all my business friends in New York, people I was on boards with who had worked with him over the years, you know, told me all about him.

And, you know, that he was essentially bad news.

And I should give no thought to going into the administration, which I didn't.

But at a critical juncture, it was clear to me, and I go through this in the book, all the different factors, but he did very much wanted to talk to me.

And I wouldn't talk to him unless I felt I would actually say yes at the end, could say yes at the end of the day.

I felt we were heading into a constitutional crisis.

I was very suspicious of the Russiagate allegations.

I thought they were being irresponsibly used to pound him from office.

And so I eventually made up my mind that I would go in, because I thought I was in the best position of stabilizing the institution, the department, the FBI, but also, you know, making sure that people didn't run over the administration.

So I went in, but Trump was more of a handful than I expected.

Even with all the warnings I got.

Yeah.

- What had you expected and in what ways did he not meet expectations?

- Well, I think probably the degree, you know, he, you know, I'm not a shrink, and I don't like people using these medical terms, but I think he, you know, he is a narcissist.

He's completely focused on his own interests.

I felt that he had some sound policy judgments.

I generally agreed with his policies.

I thought I admired the fact that he stood up for what he believed in.

He said some hard things.

He wasn't kicking the can down the road on some very difficult issues.

So, but he was, I think he was voted into office because people were angry.

A lot of the support for Trump was because people were very frustrated and angry, and they wanted to send a message, and they wanted a disruptor, as I said, in my, you know, a wrecking ball.

They wanted a wrecking ball, they got a wrecking ball.

Trouble is, it's very hard to govern and help move the country forward as a wrecking ball.

And he's a very contentious person and he's most happy when he's in a fight with somebody.

And when he's in a fight with someone, he will do anything to win, and burn bridges.

And so I, you know, it was a difficult time, and I think every cabinet member had a hard time dealing with him.

- You point out that the cabinet members who had less to deal less opportunity to deal with him seemed more successful, or, I mean, I think that Mike Pompeo would just bring up stuff that you were responsible for to change the subject.

- [Barr] Well, he denies that.

He denies that.

But, so, but yeah, I mean, if you were handling a portfolio that he didn't really care about, then you could just go off and do your thing, which is good for cabinet secretary.

It's a very efficient way to have the government.

But he was more focused on the Department of Justice than most agencies, so.

But on the other hand, he, well, he would talk to me a lot when I was working for HW Bush, who I had known since CIA.

That's where I first I worked, I started off in CIA, and I first met HW when he, and then, but I, when I was his attorney general, we probably talked six times in a year and a half, and I was probably in the Oval Office by myself with him on something four times?

But Trump was, you know, he stayed in a lot of contact with his principal cabinet secretaries, couple of calls a day sometimes, frequent meetings in the White House.

Very informal.

I actually sort of enjoyed it.

It was sort of a chaotic way of running things, but I sort of enjoyed it, you know, sort of pick up meetings in the Oval Office where you, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

(audience laughing) - I mean, you can laugh now, (laughter) but it sounds, I mean, it sounds in some ways, I mean, you write about that in the book, that it was, it reminded you of a room in your fraternity house that, you know, this sort of, this intense informality.

- [Barr] Yeah.

- That, you know, can be great, because it's sort of dynamic.

It's dynamic and it makes people feel more accessible who might otherwise not be, but also much less predictable.

- Yeah.

So we had a room in my fraternity at college, we called it the card room.

And it just seemed that there was a 24/7 card game going on, and you could never sort of detect how it, you know, who was there and who was, people were sort of coming and going in a subtle way, and it just kept on going.

And that's what the Oval Office was like.

And I'd find myself sitting in there, having gone in to talk about drugs or the border, or something like that, and, "Hey, what do you think about this trade issue?"

So, but it was dynamic.

And I actually, to me, the problem was this, before the election, you could persuade Trump to, you know, back away from some reckless and silly step that he was about to take, or some unnecessary position that he was gonna do to make it very hard politically to achieve what we had to achieve.

But it would take endless meetings, and he'd shift around all the time.

You thought you had the thing won, and then 10 minutes later it was reopened again.

And, you know, he'd beat you up.

You had to be willing to stay on your ground.

But eventually, if you said it, if you said, this will hurt you, all of a sudden he would start listening.

And if you could convince him that it wasn't a smart move for him, he would change his position.

At the time of the election, I felt he had a successful administration.

I felt, you know, he had been treated unfairly in many respects.

In other respects, he's his own worst enemy.

But in many respects, he was treated unfairly.

But I was satisfied with the performance.

And I felt it was a lawful administration, and all this stuff about it being, you know, unlawful I think was wrong.

We won, everything was challenged, challenged multiple times around the country.

We won those cases.

It wasn't an unlawful administration, but once he lost the election, there was no talking to him, because his self-interest all of a sudden was no more leverage.

You couldn't say, this will hurt you, because he felt he's already been hurt, so what does he have to lose?

So he went off half cocked, and there was no getting him back on the rails, and the stuff about it being stolen, you know, to me, once I started looking at it and understanding what had happened, it was clearly wrong.

And I wasn't gonna be a part of it.

So- - [Dan] You somewhat famously explained that to him in the Oval Office.

How did that go?

- [Barr] Well, I started out the book, if you'd read nothing else, you could read that, that's the prologue of the book.

But, everyone was trying to get him out of this frame of mind that he was going to, that he had won, and that there was some way he could stay in office.

And when I saw that that wasn't working, and he continued to attack the Department of Justice, and me, claiming we were not doing anything.

And when we were in fact looking at some of this stuff, the key stuff, I just got tired.

I felt, look, you know, somewhat, and the people on the hill were getting frustrated by this.

I felt someone has to say it.

So I said it to an AP reporter that it was, you know, so far we had seen nothing to support those claims.

And I knew at that point I would probably be fired.

And I had a meeting later that day at the White House.

So I went over for the meeting, and he called me into the Oval Office, and he was as mad as I've ever seen him.

And I go through all the, the entire details of the meeting, but I was expecting to be fired.

And he did, you know, I said, look, I know you're unhappy, and I'm happy to resign.

And he slammed the table and said, "Accepted!"

(laughing) Everyone jumped.

So I said, okay.

And I left.

And as I was in getting in my car, you know, the FBI suburban, to go back to my office to pack, there was suddenly pounding on the, this was at, in the evening, there were pounding on the windows and everyone jumped.

And he sent two lawyers out to retrieve me.

They said, he didn't mean it, as soon as you left the office- So he wants you to come back in.

I said I'm not coming back in, but we'll talk about it later.

But I resigned two weeks later.

So- - It reminds me of that joke about, you know, starting you leaving as you started, fired with enthusiasm.

(laughing) - Yeah, right.

- I want to shift gears.

I wanna mention too, for the benefit of our listing audience, that we're talking with Bill Barr, he's a former attorney general, twice the former attorney general, the former former attorney general of the United States of America.

And his book is called "One Damn Thing After Another," and it's page turner and a barn burner.

I want to turn to some of the more recent events of the, in the news lately, you, if in your work, both in previous administrations, and in the Trump administration, you were involved in federal appointments to the judiciary.

This week, Justice Clarence Thomas has in these past few weeks, Justice Clarence Thomas has received a lot of scrutiny regarding perceived ethical challenges.

And I wonder if you could offer your point of view on it all.

- Well, yeah, I haven't, you know, gotten into the details of this.

My general view is that each branch of government is a separate branch, and has to set its own rules.

So the executive branch's rules, the Congress cannot impose its conflict of interest rules on the president or vice president.

They're not subject to conflict of interest rules.

Don't apply to them, because they're a separate branch of government.

So they ultimately decide what the rules are.

Same with the Congress.

Congress can impose rules on itself, doesn't have to.

One time, there were no conflict of interest rules.

We were an agricultural society, and most of the members of Congress were farmers.

So, you know, there, it's more recent vintage, the idea that these conflict of interest rules apply across the government.

And it's the same with the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is in itself a branch of government.

And no, and I don't think they, you can have ethics rules applied on them by someone outside.

I think they have to come to their own determination about what, how they will apply rules, how will it be enforced, what makes sense, and so forth.

So I'm a little worried about this idea that you can just sort of take rules applicable to other branches of government and slap them on.

The other thing I would say is that, from what I've seen there, you know, it doesn't appear to me that some of these benefits or whatever you want to call them, were related to actual cases and decisions in cases.

But, you know, we'll see what the facts ultimately show.

And it's up to the Supreme Court to deal with it.

- You know, recent polling suggests that Americans have an unfavorable view of the Supreme Court.

It's, their favorability rating, and this is like Pew, which has been asking these questions for decades and decades, suggests that they're 40%, somewhere between 40 and 50% of Americans have a favorable view of the Supreme Court.

It's very partisan.

The difference today is very partisan.

70% or more of Republicans view the court favorably, while only 20% of Democrats do, or something on that order.

30 years ago, it was roughly 80% of Americans had a favorable view, and it was 80% of both parties.

- Well, I think it's largely because there's been an effort to make the Supreme Court a super legislature, that actually instead of neutrally applying the law, you know, sort of engages the United States in major societal changes without the political branches playing a role in that.

And that has gotten them in trouble.

And it really depends whose ox is being gored.

If they're making major changes that are liked by the progressives, then all of a sudden the Supreme Court is a great institution.

If they're retrenching and saying, well, wait a minute, we're, you know, that's a really a decision for Congress with the people.

Then all of a sudden, you know, the left hates them and the right loves them.

So that's what happens, that goes with politics.

And you know, Americans are in a very grouchy mood.

They hate everybody nowadays.

(laughing) And I understand the grouchy mood, I understand it and I sympathize with it in many respects, but it also leads to a level of sort of mindlessness, and, you know, jumping to conclusions and, you know, when I actually know the whole story, and see a little more complicated, or maybe the merits are on, you know, not as people see them.

And yet you have these people always willing, you know, just trash the organization, or trash the individual involved.

And you know, so you look at the approval levels of every person who sticks their head up above the rampart, and it's, you know, it's in the basement.

That's the way it is nowadays, which is one of the reasons I finally decided probably I should take the job of AG, because as I said to people, you know, anyone in their forties or fifties, or even maybe 60, cannot afford to make controversial decisions in the executive branch because in the environment today, their careers are completely destroyed.

They will not get a job later on.

And so every, and part of the problem in government generally is paralysis.

'Cause everyone is basically a coward, doesn't wanna make a decision.

And so I think the only people really who are capable of actually holding office and making decisions are people who are not looking for another job after the position are just, you know, are just willing to do what they think is right and let the chips blow where they may.

- Do you see a way out?

Or a way to rebuild trust in institutions?

- So, I have been, up until recently, I've been sort of optimistic, because I felt that the big dynamic in our country over the last 30 or 40 years has been the move of the Democratic party sharply to the left.

And that's not me talking as a partisan.

I mean, every empirical study has showed that's the case, and they've left a lot of people behind them, and they're kowtowing more and more to a more radical group in the party.

That is really the dynamic and that's part of the dynamic that brought Trump to power frustration with that, and frustration with the so-called elites who were not resisting it, but going along with it.

So, I have felt for some time that this was sort of, or could be a replay of 1980, when one party goes too far in one direction, it leaves a big spectrum for the other party to fill.

And I feel the way for the country back, was for the Republican party to get the hint, and put up somebody who's quasinormal (laughing) to be president of the United States.

And, I think that, I think that would lead to a resounding victory and with enough strength in Congress to reject the extremism on one side, and show that there's an alternative other than extremism on the other side.

- Do you see the extremism on the other side, on the Republican side, as being an issue as well?

- Yeah, no, I personally feel it's more reactive in this sense.

The threat to American democracy is not authoritarian black shirts coming from the right.

It's not that kind of threat.

The threat of totalitarianism is, as Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s, which is, it's more of the progressive totalitarianism that a lot of liberals, classical liberals are now talking about, whether it's Barry Weiss, or Sullivan, yeah, Andrew and people like that, that, it is totalitarian.

And who are the people losing their jobs these days?

Is it people on the left?

No.

I mean, there's more McCarthyism going on in this country than happened during McCarthy's Day.

And by a big factor.

In those days, it was, you know, people in Hollywood who had attended meetings of the Communist Party, and now if you're a kindergarten teacher, head of a university, whatever, you can lose your job.

That's the kind of creeping totalitarianism and controlling what people think that I think is the danger to freedom in this country.

I think the people on the right are not actually the threat to the democratic system.

- I feel compelled to ask you though, did you feel that way on January 6th?

- Yeah, I did.

I thought January 6th was a clown show.

I thought that anyone who thinks that the Republic was in serious danger on January 6th, I mean, is out of touch.

I mean, you know, you had a control room with Rudy Giuliani and, you know, Bannon and those people, the country couldn't have been safer.

I mean, the whole thing- (laughing) the country, I mean, this was a keystone cops operation that played into the hands of their adversaries.

And you know, people say, well, why were they treated differently than the people in Portland?

No one feels that more keenly than I, because we were trying to deal with people in Portland.

But, and they should, that was, you know, an attack on an American institution.

But they all dressed the same, dressed in black, wore masks, came out at night, with no distinguishing features, very hard to build a case.

Only people on the right would go walking into the most photographed place in the country, all wearing distinctive clothing and no face masks.

I mean, the thing was a joke.

And I would point out no agency in the Fed, even in the executive branch, went along with this.

No state went along with it.

No Republican governor, no Republican legislature, no Attorney general, deputy Attorney General, my successors, no lawyers in the other agencies.

It was a farce, like most things that Trump cooks up on his own.

- I want to, before we go to questions from the audience, I want to turn our attention to some of the issues you dealt with as Attorney General, and specifically the issue of fentanyl and drug trafficking, and the opioid epidemic generally.

Judge Pollster is here, who's overseen many of those cases.

We're grateful for your service sir, but I always have the sense that particularly when it comes to trafficking, there's a lot going on that the ordinary American does not really understand.

And I wonder if you could help us understand better why this is such an intractable problem.

- Well, I don't, it's a problem that both you have to attack on both the supply and the demand side.

People who think you can treat this, or deal with it simply by treating people, are wrong.

The main reason people get treated and stick with treatment is 'cause the enforcement system pushes it into it.

And unless we take a strong stand on the enforcement side against narcotics, I don't think we're gonna get any handle on this through treatment alone.

It's not working.

And I actually think that we can make a lot more progress on the supply side because we should be fighting it where the drug, where the head of the snake is, and the head of the snake are the cartels who control all the drugs now coming into the United States.

It's one stop shopping.

It's Mexico now.

Made it a lot easier for us.

First time I was attorney general, we had Burma, we had, you know, Columbia, Peru, and all that, it's Mexico.

And what happened prior to 1995, we destroyed the cartel.

We were able to destroy the cartels, because we took the gloves off and we went and dealt with them on their home turf.

That stopped in 1995.

And that allowed the Mexican cartels to grow into states within states.

They challenged the government in Mexico.

They have total impunity, and in my mind, they have completely corrupted the government of Mexico, both with bribery, silver, or threats, lead, silver or lead.

And so they've cowed the government of Mexico, and they can operate with complete impunity, and that's a dangerous situation.

They, you know, the legal, the diversion of legal drugs was an important battle.

My daughter was the chief opioid coordinator, and she stepped down when I became AG, which I thought was, I didn't want her to do, but she did it.

But we, that was the only year where we actually suppressed opioids, but that was mostly the legal opioids that were being abused.

And we started getting a handle on that.

But we saw the fentanyl and the synthetics just skyrocketing.

And I don't see a way out of this unless we on the supply side, law enforcement side, unless we take very strong action in Mexico against the cartels.

And I think we can really have a big effect on it.

But we've lost, we're gonna, I'll be surprised if there's any notable diminution in the number of deaths.

I think, you know, right now we are losing as many Americans to elicit drug overdoses as we lost, killed in action during the bloodiest year of World War II.

So we are sustaining casualties in this country at the rate that we would in a global war.

And no one seems to care.

It's really incredible.

- This is my final question before we go to the Q&A, but another issue you've dealt with is gun violence.

This week a report from the, I believe it's the Kaufman Family Foundation, came out noting that the leading cause of death among children under 19 years old is guns.

Gun violence.

That's overtaken traffic accidents.

What do you think should be done?

- Well, I think that the primary, you know, I mean this debate goes on, and on, and on.

And I think that the violent problem is not gonna be solved by addressing the guns.

It's gonna be by addressing the violent people.

And it always comes down to this, my estimate, the first time I was AG, which was the point at which violent crime peaked, and then went down for 22 consecutive years, because our mantra, and the state started going along with this, was, you have to identify the repeat violent offenders, the chronic violent offenders, keep them in prison for significant sentences, and your crime rate will go down.

And that's exactly what happened.

Our prison population at the time of, the crime was at its height in this country, which was 750 violent crimes per a hundred thousand people, was 800,000.

And over the next 22 years, that's state and federal.

Over the next 22 years, we increased it to 1.6 million, and crime was cut in half.

And that included 5,000 African American murder victims avoided each year by cutting the crime rate in half by putting the chronic offenders away in prison.

And that to me is the only way we're gonna solve violent crime from an enforcement standpoint.

People say, well, we should address the root causes.

If you know what the root causes are, I mean, I have my views on root causes, but if you can address 'em, that's something that'll take 25 years to do.

We have blood on the streets today, and by the way, many of the solutions, like education and job opportunities, they're not coming into places that are ridden by crime.

So you have to deal with the crime, you have to reduce the crime.

And then people start talking about, well gun, you know, let's control guns.

There are a lot more guns out there than there are habitual violent offenders.

My estimated at the time is that 1% of the population is responsible for about two thirds of the violent crime, predatory, the predatory crime, not crimes of passion.

And I was pleased to, not pleased, but I was interested to see that that rate has actually come up in other countries.

Sweden did a study, I think it was in 2015, 1% responsible for 63% of the crime.

Now those are the people who are committing the violence.

The other thing is, the way we reduce violent crime is aggressively go after people who use guns in crime.

If you use a gun in a crime, you should go away for a long time.

And when we did that, the crime rate started dropping precipitously.

And yet people are not willing right now to say, well this guy, this is his third of violent offense, armed robbery, he should go away for 25 years.

Oh no, you know, and everyone knows, everyone picks up the paper.

They see that all the crime is being committed by people who are just going through the revolving door.

So I think going after the guns is a fool's errand.

But the other thing is that the extremism of the anti-gun people has made it impossible to come to any kind of reasonable approach on guns, because they make it very plain what the end game is.

When they say we're coming for your AR-15s, which is essentially a modular rifle, that are essentially rifles today, but you know, we're coming for your AR-15s, and you know, this is our agenda, and they put all these extreme positions down, then everything looks to the people who want to defend gun rights as a slippery slope.

So it makes very hard to reach any kind of reasonable agreement on things that you would think we'd be able to agree to.

I know this because I tried to negotiate this back under Bush, and I tried to negotiate it under Trump and, you know, it's just hard getting, the only you know, there were a few senators on the hill who just said, we're not gonna use this as a Christmas tree.

Let's just see what we can agree to.

That's the kind of solution that you could actually get some steps made.

And we saw that just recently with what Cornin, and was it Murphy of Connecticut?

Maybe it wasn't a big step forward, but it was a step forward.

And they got there by the both of them just saying, we're not gonna listen to any, don't come in here with these killer amendments that are actually meant to score political points.

The point here is not to score political points.

The point here is to see if we can find common ground.

I think over time, we could get back to that approach on guns.

There are, you know, when I was AG I supported some measures against guns.

And to get back to that environment, I think you're gonna have to convince the people who support guns that this is not the camel's nose under the tent, and it's not a slippery slope.

So.

- Mr. Bill Barr, he's the former Attorney General of the United States of America.

(applause) We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, chief executive here at the City Club, and I'm our moderator today.

We do welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, and those of you joining us via our livestream at cityclub.org, or radio broadcast on 89.7 WKSI Idea Stream Public Media, that's our primary media partner, or today on CSPAN as well.

If you'd like to tweet a question for our speaker, you can tweet it @thecityclub.

You can also text it to 330-541-5794.

It's 330-541-5794, and our staff will work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please.

- [Spreaker] Our first question is a question that was texted to us.

During your tenure as attorney general, you expressed concerns about the use of executive power and the erosion of rule of law.

Given the January 6th insurrection and former President Trump's continued lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even though you concluded and have publicly stated there was no voter fraud committed that would've resulted in a different outcome, how would you suggest we address this continued erosion of the rule of law?

Thank you.

- Well, the rule of law, the erosion of the rule of law isn't just a question of, to me, is actually not primarily a question of executive overreach.

It is, you know, people, Rule of law, a lot of people use the term, they never really think about what it means.

And to me, all rule of law means, it's the key to democracy.

Democracy is the political translation of the golden rule, which is you should only do to someone else which you're willing to have done to yourself.

Which means if the majority passes a rule, it should be a rule under which they're also living.

That's the major reason we are willing to turn power over to the majority.

Is it democracy something that protects freedom?

Why would the founders have said democracy protects freedom?

It's exactly because of that critical ingredient.

That's what consent of the govern actually means.

It means that if you're consenting to something, it's because everyone's gonna be governed by it.

And the majority wouldn't put on me something that they're not also under.

So the rule of law is that the same rules apply to everybody, and that means it's the very opposite of hypocrisy.

And today in the public square, hypocrisy reigns, and we see it every day.

And in my opinion, you know, generally speaking, the mainstream media has become completely hypocritical and partisan.

Generally speaking, they're individual, I mean they're individual journalists I have great respect for, it would be a tragedy if he's the nominee, because I don't, I just think it'll just, A, I don't think he'll win, but if he did win, it would be more trench warfare.

- I hope somebody asks you if you have another candidate in mind.

Sir?

- [Audience Member] Greetings, welcome to Cleveland.

You mentioned earlier that you had suspicions about the Russia gate story.

I have, I am of the opinion that that was basically a coup de'etat that was failed in this country.

And you mentioned before Congress that the White House, Trump White House was spied upon.

Well, here we are six years later, and it looks like they got away with it.

How is nobody held accountable for what happened?

- [Barr] Yeah.

Well, you know, this is another example of the hypocrisy I talked about.

Russiagate was a big lie.

And it stunk to me from the very beginning.

I just, it didn't fit together.

I obviously waited to see what the facts were and I went in expecting to see more to it.

There wasn't.

- [Dan] Russiagate was- - The allegations that, you know, that Trump was in the collusion, you know, colluded with Russia to- - Thank you.

- You know, to- - It's been a while.

- Yeah, to do the hacking of the democratic emails, and so forth.

So, I felt it was a big lie that was used to cripple, if not drive the Trump administration out of government.

Does anyone acknowledge that today?

Does any of the media acknowledge it?

When the media criticizes me for basically getting to the point, getting to the point where we're saying, I don't see the evidence on obstruction here, you know, that this whole thing was a hoax.

But Durham, I appointed Durham to try to get to the bottom of it.

I didn't presume that it was a criminal offense.

I asked him to get to the bottom, and then if there is something to be prosecuted, he could go ahead and prosecute it.

I think he'll be coming out shortly with his report, and I hope he casts light on what happened.

The reason I think, if no one goes to prison for this hoax, it'll be because Durham and others who looked at it felt they did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute somebody, which is a very, very high standard.

That's, and you know, I have to say, I don't like this whole environment we're in, which is part of the same thing of using the criminal justice system.

That telling, getting your side of the thing at doesn't require that other people get into orange jumpsuits.

In other words, getting to the truth of something, and illuminating for the public what happened is more important than collecting scallops, because collecting scallops, you're setting yourself the highest standard possible, which is beyond a reasonable doubt.

And you're in a secret process, and a lot of evidence cannot be introduced, because of other evidentiary rules and so forth.

And it's not a good way of getting quickly to the truth of what happened, and quote holding, when you say, let's hold someone accountable, if you wanna do it criminally, it's a long road to hoe, it's a long road to hoe, and it's done in secret, and you're not told about it.

And I understand why people get frustrated, but I think it's an ugly thing in our society when you have everyone talking about locking the other group of people up.

They're so cocksure about it.

I would like to see more accountability.

It wouldn't surprise me if laws were broken.

When I look at the evidence, the circumstantial evidence is very compelling that something was rotten.

But being able to say that, and see it, and conclude it as a judgemental thing for yourself is a lot different than actually having enough evidence to put someone in prison.

Very different standard.

- Thank you.

- [Audience Member] Attorney Barr, welcome to Cleveland.

- [Barr] Yeah.

- And thank you for your public service.

What is your advice?

What would be your advice to the all of us in yours and my party, due to the fact that there's this, and this is my choice words, a stranglehold by a big core of the party that's Trump or you know, or nothing.

How can we get other, what can we do with the party, to get this way where more candidates can be viable, and be heard, it's, and and to turn the chances of the party around to possibly a victory.

The two emerging, the two announced candidates are barely getting nowhere.

All the polls show single digits for most of these.

What does the party do?

What can the party do?

What do you recommend the party do to get away from this one-man situation?

- Well, I think it comes down to, to obviously this primary, I personally believe that Trump will not be the nominee.

I don't, I think that he will be beaten, and I think a lot of what's going on now is actually a chimera.

It doesn't, it conceals what I think are the basic dynamics.

He, a lot of Republicans are abandoning his ship, and because they wanna win.

I think a lot of Republicans value what he did.

They give him credit for a lot of the things he did.

They also know he is his own worst enemy, and that he actually brings out more votes than he brings in.

That's just a fact of life.

And so he, and so because they recognize, I think, how important this election is, and that they will not win the election with him at the helm, I don't think he's gonna end up getting the nomination.

And I just think now, speaking parochially among Republicans, I think people have to, I said actually when I first came into the government, I said, you know, the MAGA movement's gonna have to grow up.

And by that I wasn't being condescending, I was, it has to mature.

People understand why you want to be mad, and send a message, and poke someone in the eye, but that's not what the country needs.

We need to build.

We don't need a wrecking ball.

We also have to return to the politics of persuasion.

Trump isn't in interested in persuading anyone.

Trump is, as the questioner said, is interested in holding this part of the Republican party and then extorting the rest of the party to go along with him.

'Cause otherwise I'll pick up my ball and go home.

I think the question has to be called now, even if he does pick up his ball and go home, because the consequences of him getting the nomination, one he will lose, he will lose the election.

He will not only lose, because in none of the states that were up for grabs is any closer to go with him.

In fact, they're further away from him.

He will not only lose himself, but he will bring out so many votes in states like New York and California, that the Republicans will get devastated in the other, in the Houses of Congress, especially in the House of Representatives.

Our margin is because, are from states like New York and California.

Okay, he will do that.

He will then bring in someone to be his vice president on the ticket who is not of, you know, first caliber, 'cause anyone worth their salt is not gonna agree to be his vice president after what he did to Mike Pence.

So he's gonna bring in some sort of Looney Tunes person (laughing) and that person will then become the standard bearer of MAGA.

And we're sort of back where we started from.

So I think the question has to be called in this election.

And people have to start seeing that this is really nothing more than a cult of personality.

And that that we have other serious candidates who have many, most of the same policies, and don't have all the baggage.

If it doesn't happen, you know, maybe the Democrats will be happy, but I don't think Republicans will be for a long time.

- And I'm seeing across the general party, and many of them, I think you're saying that they feel like in some ways the party is leaving them.

So I'm curious, in addition to your sort of saying that you think the left has gotten really extreme, what's your view of many republicans that, I mean republican friends I know who actually feel like their party has gotten pretty far to the right, and has sort of left some of their core values that they had before?

- [Barr] Yeah.

So I mean, from my examination of it, when I say the Republican party has not moved as much as the Democratic party, I'm talking about the party, the general group of the party is pretty much where it was.

And there are all kinds of charts that show this based on attitudes and positions on different issues.

And it's been the Democratic party that has done a big quantum leap to the left.

And this, I think any, you know, I mean, how many Democrats do you hear nowadays saying, my party left me.

Okay.

You know, it's not that the Republican party caught up to them, it's that their party left them.

I think that's a fact, now the other, what that did was it caused a lot of people, many of whom had been apolitical up 'til that time, but working class Americans, to react against the excesses of the progressives and become a stronger force in the Republican party, and an increment to the Republican party, that became important for the Republicans to bring into the fold.

That led to a process in the Republican party where the leadership of the Republican party has become more homogeneous.

It doesn't have the same span of, you know, northeastern rhinos and so forth.

There's a lot more consistency in thinking in the Republican party among the political leaders.

So to that extent, you were right that, you know, sort of the span of opinion, especially among prominent people in the party has gotten narrower.

But that's because of the necessity for Republicans to bring in and to recognize the legitimate concerns of working class Americans.

You have, what's happening, I don't know if this is happening in Cleveland, but it's certainly happening in many eastern cities that I'm familiar with, and visited, and my own, which is you had this complete overthrow where it used to be in my neighborhood, all the houses had Republican signs, and all the pickup trucks in front had union and Democratic signs.

Completely reversed.

Completely reversed.

The Republicans used to be thought of as the party of Wall Street, you have to come pretty hard for a Republican on Wall Street these days.

Wealthy people, the vast majority of billionaires and millionaires are Democrats now.

So there has been this social change that I'm talking about that is partly a reaction to the basic dynamic that I'm talking about, which is the move of the Democrats to the left.

And you know, as I say, in normal politics, that's an opportunity.

That's an opportunity.

You don't, you shouldn't go, you know, waltzing off to your own, to the other end of the spectrum.

But the people who are viewed as authoritarian in the Republican party, I don't know what else to talk to, refer to them.

They're reacting, and they've adopted a lot of the mindset of what they don't like on the left, which is trying to use the law and the coercive power of the state to force people to their ideas of perfect society.

To me, that's not what conservatism is about.

But anyway, that's sort of a riff on that.

- We're gonna do one last, last question.

Sorry.

- I'll go on your show, Geraldo.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Dan] And this man knows what, that we're coming up against the top of the hour here, too.

- I am honored, I'm honored to be here.

And General Barr, you really are my favorite person in Washington I'm filled with admiration for the way you kept, you know, being relatively friendly with the president, the way you kept the walls from falling in.

Kept him from absolutely cranking up during Russia, Russia, Russia, as he was being assailed nonstop.

Having said that, I think January 6th was more profoundly disruptive, and more serious than maybe some of your remarks.

But I, you are my favorite person in Washington, I think the most honest person in Washington.

- [Barr] Thank you.

- And the question I have for you, given that I trust you so, is Donald Trump, a lot of my friends say, okay, he's made mistakes, and, okay, January 6th, and okay, this and that.

It is his policies that we'd be voting for.

Given that pragmatic side also, do you think he is emotionally fit to be president of the United States?

I disagree.

I think that Trump and Biden will be the candidates, that whatever that says about the United States, is he fit to be president of the United States?

Is Donald Trump fit to be president?

- What, this is the way I'll answer that Geraldo, which is, if you believe in his policies, what he's advertising as his policies, he's the last person who could actually execute them and achieve them.

He does not have the discipline, he does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking, or setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system.

It is a horror show when he's, when, you know when he's left to his own devices.

And so, you may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies.

He will deliver chaos, and if anything lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be.

- That was a very direct answer.

- [Geraldo] Thank you General.

- Thank you very much.

(applause) Bill Barr is the former Attorney General of the United States of America.

He's the author of a memoir called "One Damn Thing After Another," and he joined us here as part of our Authors in Conversation series, which we present in partnership with the John P. Murphy Foundation and the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

We would also like to just say thank you to guests at tables hosted by the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.

A special thank you for your partnership today, Dominion Energy, Ohio, friends of Jim McMonagle and Vorhese, Glen Mead, Global Cleveland, Idea Stream Public Media, Jones Day, The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, and Ulmer and Byrne, LLP.

Thank you all for joining us.

Next week we have a couple of great programs, one on Tuesday featuring award-winning actor and author Patterson Joseph, and Friday May 19th, we have Eduardo Gonzalez, president and CEO of Pharagon Corporation.

We hope you'll join us for those.

You can find out more about all of our programs and visit our archives, and share this program with your friends when you visit cityclub.org.

Thank you friends.

Our forum is adjourned.

Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend.

(bell ringing) (applause) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Idea Stream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.