Attorney General William Barr has resigned, according to a tweet President Donald Trump sent out on Monday (Dec. 14).
“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,” Trump tweeted.
In a follow-up tweet, he added, “Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all!”
He also added a photo of Barr’s resignation letter, which says that he will depart his job on Dec. 23. “I will spend the next week wrapping up a few remaining matters important to the Administration,” Barr wrote in the letter, which mostly applauded Trump.
“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” the attorney general continued. “Your 2016 victory speech in which you reachout out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds. The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your Administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia.”
His resignation came moments after the Electoral College in California made President-elect Joe Biden’s win official.
Barr previously faced criticism for comparing the COVID-19 lockdowns to slavery. “You know, putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s — you know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” he said back in September.
Check out Trump’s tweets below.