Attorney General Bill Barr has vigorously defended President Trump's controversial decision to fire the independent inspector general who transmitted a whistleblower's report to Congress about Trump's contact with Ukraine.

Trump late Friday fired the IG, Michael Atkinson, calling him a 'disgrace' and complained: 'Never came in to see me, never requested to see me.' Atkinson complied with reporting requirements set out in statute, which contain an area of friction between congressional and executive authority.

Barr, who has proven to be one of the president's most loyal defenders since Trump nominated him, supported the action in remarks he made on Fox News host Laura Ingraham's show.

Attorney General William Barr said President Trump 'was correct' in firing the IG for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson

'He was obliged to follow the interpretation of the Department of Justice and he ignored it,' Barr said. 'I think a president was correct in firing him,' he said.

Bar said Atkinson should have followed Justice Department guidance not to hand over the information, which ultimately contributed to Trump's impeachment.

Atkinson reported the whistleblower's report, deemed an 'urgent concern,' in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. That triggered a waiting period before required reporting to Congress. The law states that the director of national intelligence 'shall' provide reports to congressional committees.

In the case of the report on Trump's call to the president of Ukraine, which Trump has said repeatedly was a 'perfect call,' that brought it into the domain of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

Trump soon after the firing railed against Atkinson, a career official who spent 15 years at the Justice Department before assuming his IG post in 2018.

'I thought he did a terrible job, absolutely terrible.' His words indicated the firing was retribution for his conduct regarding the whistleblower. 'He took a fake report and he took it to Congress,' Trump said.

Barr also called Russia probe an effort to 'sabotage the presidency.' He spoke on Fox News host Laura Ingraham's program

Michael Atkinson, the fired inspector general of the intelligence community, provided Congress with a whistle-blower's report about Trump's infamous call to the president of Ukraine

Trump has been lashing out at inspectors general for a period of days

Atkinson shot back in a statement Sunday: 'It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial InspectorGeneral, and from my commitment to continue to do so,' he said.

He added: 'The American people deserve an honest and effective government. They are counting on you to use authorized channels to bravely speak up — there is no disgrace for doing so.'

Trump has been lashing out at inspectors general for a period of days, including the IG who authored a devastating report based on interviews with hospital executives about a lack of medical equipment to combat the coronavirus.

Barr has also been a devoted Trump defender on the Russia probe, bringing on a U.S. attorney to probe the FBI's conduct at the start of the investigation.

Barr believes the Russia investigation that shadowed President Donald Trump for the first two years of his administration was started without any basis and amounted to an effort to 'sabotage the presidency,' he said in an interview with Fox News Channel.

Barr offered no support for his assertion that the FBI lacked a basis for opening the investigation and made no mention of the fact that the bureau began its probe after a Trump campaign adviser purported to have early knowledge that Russia had dirt on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

Barr, who has appointed a U.S. attorney to lead an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, said the Justice Department has evidence there was 'something far more troubling' than just mistakes during the investigation that eventually morphed into special counsel Robert Mueller´s probe.

'I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history,' Barr said in the interview with Fox News Channel's Laura Ingraham that aired Thursday night.

The attorney general said the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia 'without any basis.'

'Even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president,' Barr said. 'To sabotage the presidency, and I think that - or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.'

The Justice Department's inspector general found the FBI was justified in opening an investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia - to protect against a national security threat - and found the bureau didn´t act with political bias.

Trump and his supporters are counting on different conclusions from the separate investigation led by John Durham, the U.S. attorney Barr selected to examine the early days of the Russia probe. Durham´s investigation is ongoing, and Barr did not provide any evidence about what Durham has found so far.

Barr has been a loyal supporter of Trump since becoming attorney general, though their positive relationship showed signs of fraying earlier this year when Barr said in a television interview that Trump's tweets about ongoing Justice Department cases made it 'impossible' for him to do his job.

Mueller concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election, but his investigation didn´t find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump´s campaign and Russia. Mueller also examined about a dozen possible instances of obstruction of justice and has pointedly said he could not exonerate the president.

The inspector general´s report identified significant problems with applications to receive and renew warrants to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. Investigators were concerned about Page´s ties to Russia, but never charged him with any wrongdoing. Inspector General Michael Horowitz told senators the FBI failed to follow its own standards for accuracy and completeness when it sought warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page´s communications.

The report detailed 17 errors and omissions during those wiretap applications, including failing to tell the court when questions were raised about the reliability of some of the information it had presented to receive the warrants. Those mistakes prompted internal changes within the FBI and spurred a congressional debate over whether the bureau´s surveillance tools should be reined in.

But Barr believes they were more than just mistakes, offering a personal view of the probe, a highly unusual move for a prosecutor in an ongoing investigation.

'My own view is that the evidence shows that we´re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness,' he said. 'There is something far more troubling here, and we´re going to get to the bottom of it.

The FBI opened its investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia on July 31, 2016.

By that point, Russian hackers had broken into the Clinton campaign and other Democratic email accounts and George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, had boasted to a diplomat that he was aware that Russia had derogatory information on Clinton.

Though Trump and Barr have seized on errors made during the surveillance of Page, the investigation had already been underway for months by the time the first application was filed.



