Los Angeles-based attorney Robert Barnes, who describes himself as a giant slayer and legal crusader, has been exceptionally outspoken in the defense of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. He has also been a fierce critic of big tech and its efforts to censor and suppress the president. I spoke to him last week about those issues and more.
I’m assuming you’re a Republican.
I’m an independent Trump supporter.
Then why are you such a strong supporter of Trump?
Because Trump fought for the people I grew up with in the Northeast and South, the working-class folks of this country. These people have been mostly abandoned by our politicians over the last few decades, but Trump was willing to fight for them. He could have easily entered office and then betrayed them on trade or economic policy or cultural issues. He could have betrayed them on war and found some excuse to expand our war frontiers. Instead, he kept his word across the board, and he did so at great personal and political expense, because the system would have championed him if he betrayed the people who put him into office. He was loyal to the community I came from, and that’s why I’ll always be loyal to him in return.
What you just said articulates how a lot of Jewish people feel about the president, that he has never abandoned the Jewish community.
If you had told me that a reality TV star would end up being this populist champion of outsiders and underdogs, I wouldn’t have guessed that. But it’s extraordinary to have witnessed, and I believe that if it isn’t Trump in 2020 it’ll be Trump in 2024. January 21 will either be the beginning of Trump’s second term or the beginning of his campaign for a second term.
Have you ever formally represented the president?
Yes. I represented him in Georgia after the election.
It seems to me that the president felt that he was doomed, whether legally or illegally, and he’s putting up a fight to maintain his image and the legacy of going down as the underdog whose reelection was stolen. Or do you think he still really believes he has a fighting chance?
Trump has always believed, as he wrote The Art of the Deal, that you hope for the best and plan for the worst. I think he hoped that the various institutions would step up and fix this election, while at the same time planning for them to fail. So you’re seeing a parallel track being taken, but I do believe he sees this as the middle or end of Act Two, and that Act Three has yet to begin. But no matter what happens, we haven’t seen the end of Donald Trump.
Are you convinced that Trump won the election?
I think an honest vote did elect Donald Trump. I think that he found himself inside the margin of fraud and that enough illegal votes were cast to make the difference in the Electoral College, because you’re talking about 40,000 total votes between Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. I have no doubt that in each of those states there were more illegal votes cast than Biden’s margin of victory.
