Bill Barr Warns CNN’s Jake Tapper That Colorado Ballot Ban Will Only Help Trump: ‘He Feeds on Grievance’

Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr warned opponents of Donald Trump that the Colorado Supreme Court ruling keeping the former president off the 2024 ballot would only serve to strengthen his standing with MAGA Republicans.

“As you know, I strongly oppose Donald Trump for the Republican nomination,” Barr told CNN’s Jake Tapper . “But I think that this case is legally wrong and untenable. And I think this kind of action of stretching the law, taking these hyper-aggressive positions to knock Trump out the race are counterproductive. They backfire. As you know, he feeds on grievance just like a fire feeds on oxygen, and this will end up as a grievance that helps him.”

Barr said he disagreed with the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision because it denied Trump due process.

“So, if I understand you correctly, you’re not even saying that you disagree necessarily with what the district court, and then the Colorado Supreme Court, found in terms of insurrection — you just think it’s the wrong process,” Tapper said.

“Legally here, the denial of due process is fatal,” Barr said.

He went on to explain, “To deprive somebody of the right to hold public office requires due process. It requires adjudication of two core issues: One, was there an insurrection? Did the public disturbance rise to the level of an insurrection? And second, what was the role of the individual? Was it engagement? Did they do something to break their oath of office?”

Barr said that if every state decided these questions for themselves, “does different things, and knocks national candidates off balance — It would be chaos.”

Barr was particularly impressed with the dissent, however.

“The three Democratic justices who dissented, their opinions, I think, are masterful. As they pointed out, they said the process here was a procedural Frankenstein.”

The Trump campaign has said it will appeal the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling.

Watch the clip above via CNN.