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 they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public." Americans were being deceived into thinking "that there was this systematic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines, controlled by somebody else, were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense." Barr stressed to the President that this was "crazy stuff," arguing that not only was the conspiracy theory a waste of time, but it was also "doing [a] great, great disservice to the country."

As Attorney General Barr left the meeting, he talked with Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, and Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law. "I think he's become more realistic and knows that there's a limit to how far he can take this," Meadows said, according to Barr. Kushner reassured Barr, "we're working on this, we're working on it." Barr was hopeful that the President was beginning to accept reality. The opposite happened.

"I felt that things continued to deteriorate between the 23rd and the weekend of the 29th," Barr recalled. Barr was concerned because President Trump began meeting with delegations of State legislators, and it appeared to him that "there was maneuvering going on." Barr had "no problem" with challenging an election "through the appropriate process," but "worried" that he "didn't have any visibility into what was going on" and that the "President was digging in."

Attorney General Barr had been clear that DOJ was investigating claims of fraud. The Department simply was not turning up any real evidence of malfeasance, and certainly nothing that would overturn the election. Just as Barr feared, the President turned on DOJ anyway.

On November 29, 2020, Fox News's Maria Bartiromo interviewed President Trump. It was his first TV interview since he lost his bid for reelection. The President claimed the election was "rigged" and rife with "fraud." President Trump repeated various conspiracy theories, leading with the claim that Dominion's voting machines had "glitches," which moved "thousands of votes from my account to Biden's account." President Trump pointed to "dumps of votes," a reference to the batches of mail-in ballots that had been tabulated later in the counting process. He rambled off various other, spurious allegations, including that dead people voted in significant numbers.

"This is total fraud," the President said. "And how the FBI and Department of Justice—I don't know—maybe they're involved, but how