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WASHINGTON \u2014 Former Attorney General William P. Barr writes in a new memoir that former President Donald J. Trump<\/a>\u2019s \u201cself-indulgence and lack of self-control\u201d cost him the 2020 election and says \u201cthe absurd lengths to which he took his \u2018stolen election\u2019 claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n In the book, \u201cOne Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General<\/a>,\u201d <\/em>Mr. Barr also urges his fellow Republicans to pick someone else as the party\u2019s nominee for the 2024 election, calling the prospect of another presidential run by Mr. Trump \u201cdismaying.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,\u201d Mr. Barr writes.<\/p>\n The memoir \u2014 an account of Mr. Barr\u2019s time as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and then again under Mr. Trump \u2014 defends his own actions in the Trump administration that led to sharp criticism of a Justice Department setting aside its independence<\/a> to bend to White House pressure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Barr was long considered a close ally of Mr. Trump. But the two fell out toward the end of the Trump administration, when Mr. Barr refused to go along with Mr. Trump\u2019s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.<\/p>\n In a statement last June, Mr. Trump denounced his former attorney general, calling him a \u201cswamp creature\u201d and a \u201cRINO\u201d \u2014 meaning Republican in Name Only \u2014 who \u201cwas afraid, weak and frankly, now that I see what he is saying, pathetic.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Mr. Barr portrays Mr. Trump as a president who \u2014 despite sometimes displaying \u201cthe menacing mannerisms\u201d of a strongman ruler as a \u201cschtick\u201d to project an image of strength \u2014 had operated within guardrails set up by his advisers and achieved many conservative policy goals. But Mr. Trump \u201clost his grip\u201d after the election, he writes.<\/p>\n \u201cHe stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,\u201d Mr. Barr writes. \u201cHe surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the book, Mr. Barr scorns the news media, accusing them of \u201ccorruption\u201d and \u201cactive support for progressive ideology.\u201d The political left, he writes, became radicalized during President Barack Obama\u2019s second term. He compares its support for social justice issues to \u201cthe same kind of revolutionary and totalitarian ideas that propelled the French Revolution, the Communists of the Russian Revolution and the fascists of 20th-century Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Barr also denounces the inquiry by the F.B.I. and then the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016. He writes that \u201cthe matter that really required investigation\u201d was \u201chow did the phony Russiagate scandal get going, and why did the F.B.I. leadership handle the matter in such an inexplicable and heavy-handed way?\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Barr rejects as \u201cdrivel\u201d the criticism that his summary of the special counsel\u2019s report that he issued before the report became public was distorted<\/a> in a way that favored Mr. Trump<\/a>. Mr. Barr insists that his description \u2014 including his declaration that Mr. Trump did not commit obstruction of justice \u2014 was \u201centirely accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n In defending that conclusion, Mr. Barr writes that it was a \u201csimple fact that the president never did anything to interfere with the special counsel\u2019s investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n But his book does not address any of the specific incidents that Mr. Mueller\u2019s report laid out as raising potential obstruction-of-justice concerns<\/a>, such as the fact that Mr. Trump dangled<\/a> a pardon<\/a> at his former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort<\/a>, while urging Mr. Manafort not to cooperate with the inquiry.<\/p>\n In a chapter titled \u201cUpholding Fairness, Even for Rascals,\u201d Mr. Barr defends his handling of two other cases arising from the Mueller investigation. Mr. Barr writes that it was \u201creasonable\u201d for him to overrule line prosecutors<\/a> and seek a more lenient sentence<\/a> for Mr. Trump\u2019s ally Roger J. Stone Jr.<\/p>\n And addressing his decision to drop the prosecution<\/a> of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump\u2019s former national security adviser, for lying to the F.B.I. \u2014 even though Mr. Flynn had already pleaded guilty \u2014 he writes that the evidence was insufficient, the F.B.I.\u2019s handling of the case had been \u201can abuse of power\u201d and Mr. Mueller\u2019s charges against him were not \u201cfair.\u201d<\/p>\n As he did while in office, Mr. Barr laments that Mr. Trump\u2019s public comments about the Justice Department undermined his ability to do his job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEven though I was basing decisions on what I thought was right under the law and facts, if my decisions ended up the same as the president\u2019s expressed opinion, it made it easier to attack my actions as politically motivated,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n Mr. Barr also describes resisting Mr. Trump\u2019s bidding in some cases. He declined to charge the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. for allegedly leaking classified information; insisted that the administration had run out of time to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census; and rejected Mr. Trump\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d idea that he could use an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n Lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department had to talk Mr. Trump out of those ideas, which could be \u201cbruising\u201d and amounted to \u201ceating grenades,\u201d Mr. Barr writes.<\/p>\n On the scandal that led to Mr. Trump\u2019s first impeachment, in which Mr. Trump withheld aid to Ukraine as leverage to try to get Ukraine\u2019s president to announce an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Barr was scathing.<\/p>\n He calls it \u201canother mess \u2014 this one self-inflicted and the result of abject stupidity,\u201d a \u201charebrained gambit\u201d and \u201cidiotic beyond belief.\u201d But while Mr. Barr describes the conversation Mr. Trump had with Ukraine\u2019s president on the topic as \u201cunseemly and injudicious,\u201d he maintains that it did not rise to a \u201ccriminal offense.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, Mr. Barr writes that he did not think Mr. Trump\u2019s actions before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol<\/a> \u2014 which he had condemned in a statement the day after as \u201corchestrating a mob to pressure Congress\u201d and \u201ca betrayal of his office and his supporters\u201d \u2014 met the legal standard for the crime of incitement, even though they were \u201cwrong.\u201d<\/p>\n The book opens with a Dec. 1, 2020, meeting with Mr. Trump hours after Mr. Barr gave an interview<\/a> contradicting the president\u2019s claims of a stolen election, saying the Justice Department had \u201cnot seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump was furious, he writes, accusing Mr. Barr of \u201cpulling the rug out from under me\u201d and saying he must \u201chate Trump.\u201d After Mr. Barr says he explained why claims of various fraud were unfounded, he offered to resign and Mr. Trump slammed the table and yelled \u201caccepted!\u201d Mr. Trump reversed himself as Mr. Barr left the White House, but Mr. Barr stepped down before the end of the month<\/a>.<\/p>\n His book expands on that theme, going through specific \u201cfact-free claims of fraud\u201d that Mr. Trump has put forward and explaining why the Justice Department found them baseless. He lists several reasons, for example, that claims about purportedly hacked Dominion voting machines were \u201cabsolute nonsense\u201d and \u201cmeaningless twaddle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe election was not \u2018stolen,\u2019\u201d Mr. Barr writes. \u201cTrump lost it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n