Trump announces William Barr's resignation as Electoral College affirms Biden’s victory

US President Donald Trump has announced that Attorney General William Barr, the head of the Department of Justice, will leave office before Christmas.

The announcement of Barr’s resignation on Monday came just moments after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump was formalized by the Electoral College.

The shake-up, in the twilight of Trump’s tenure in the White House, also followed weeks of public clashes between Barr and the president.

Barr’s resignation letter, shared on Twitter by Trump as he made the announcement, elaborately praised the president and said he felt “proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people.”

“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the race of relentless, implacable resistance,” Barr’s letter reads. “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”

Trump, in the tweets, also implied he bore no ill will toward Barr, despite his recent criticisms.

“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House,” Trump said in a pair of tweets. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!”

Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will serve as acting attorney general following Barr’s departure, Trump said in the tweets.

“Richard Donoghue, former US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, will take over Rosen’s role as the No. 2 official at the Justice Department,” Trump wrote.

Barr in early December directly contradicted Trump when he revealed that the Department of Justice had not found any evidence of large-scale voter or election fraud that would overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s projected victory.

That admission during an interview with the Associated Press undercut the president, who has refused to concede to Biden and is falsely claiming he won the election, citing an array of unproven fraud conspiracies and asserting the race was “rigged” against him.

The statements from Barr also sharply undermined the legal efforts from lawyers on the Trump campaign to reverse Biden’s wins in key swing states.

That legal team, led by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has filed a series of lawsuits attempting to invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes, with a specific focus on counties that leaned heavily Democratic in the presidential election. Many of those long-shot lawsuits have already been rejected, and none so far have swayed swing-state judges to block or nullify the certification of Biden’s wins.

Following the Electoral College vote earlier Monday, any remaining efforts to undo Biden’s victory became significantly less likely to succeed.