'Traitor': Conspiracy theories fuel MAGA rage against former Trump AG Bill Barr

Bulwark writer Will Sommer says President Donald Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr caught flack at a recent Fox News appearance, but the reason for his condemnation couldn’t be less flimsy.

“Why did Fox just bring on traitor Bill Barr? He should be in prison,” posted MAGA influencer Gunther Eagleman, while another Trump enthusiast wrote “Bill Barr is on Fox News instead of a prison cell."

Sommer said X accounts and YouTube commenters are demanding Fox ban Barr from its airwaves, and wish him a prison term for treason.

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“Why the insistence that Barr has committed a criminal betrayal of the country? Naturally, it’s a conspiracy theory,” said Sommer.

“Huge swaths of the right-wing media audience have latched on to allegations that Barr schemed with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and conservative pundit Armstrong Williams to hatch the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and 18 other people,” Sommer writes.

The controversy stems from right-wing video producer Project Veritas publishing reports from sole source Patrícia Lélis, who Sommer describes as a ”Brazilian national fugitive wanted by the FBI and last known to be hiding out in Mexico.”

Lélis claims she learned of Barr’s scheme to orchestrate Trump’s prosecutions while working as Armstrong Williams’ employee. Sommer said it does not appear to matter that Merrick Garland — not Bill Barr — was attorney general at the time. Lélis alleges Barr secretly met with Jack Smith and Fani Willis to “hatch plans to bring a RICO case against Trump and more than a dozen other defendants.”

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Project Veritas published three videos focused on Lélis’s allegations, and Sommer said much of the American right have taken her claims “at face value.”

“They’ve been promoted by InfoWars chief Alex Jones, pundit Dinesh D’Souza, and Mario Nawfal, the ubiquitous X personality with more than 2 million followers,” writes Sommer. “Lélis has appeared on online politics streamer Real America’s Voice News, the home of prominent right-wing figures like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.”

“White nationalist figure” Nick Fuentes cited his own appearance on Bill Barr’s alleged “enemies list” to boost his credibility against allegations that he’s a federal informant, said Sommer.

Lélis’ believers ignore that she accused a Brazilian politician of rape in 2015, only to have police drop the case and request her own arrest, said Sommer, or that police determined her “texts” accusing the son of Brazil’s then-president Jair Bolsonaro of threatening her were forgeries. Sommer also points out that Lélis likely stole the photo of a baby from a social media account and photoshopped her own face onto the mother’s to make Lélis look like a mom.

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Still, Sommer reports Project Veritas telling him they stand behind her claims, and they plan more releases from her in the future, despite Brazilians familiar with Lélis being “aghast” at the company treating her like a credible source.

“She is a diagnosed mythomaniac!” one wrote to Project Veritas on X. “For God’s sake.”

Read the full Bulwark report at this link.