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William Barr,US Attorney-General.Credit:Getty

One of the people insisted that Barr had been weighing his departure since before last week and that Trump had not affected the Attorney-General’s thinking. Another said Barr had concluded that he had completed the work that he set out to accomplish at the Justice Department.

But the president's public complaints about the election,including a baseless allegation earlier last week that federal law enforcement had rigged the election against him,are certain to cast a cloud over any early departure by Barr. By leaving early,Barr could avoid a confrontation with the president over his refusal to advance Trump's efforts to rewrite the election results.

Barr’s departure would also deprive the president of a Cabinet officer who has wielded the power of the Justice Department more deeply in service of a president’s political agenda than any attorney-general in a half-century. Conversely,it would please some Trump allies,who have called for Barr to step down over his refusal to wade further into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election outcome.

Barr has used the power of the Justice Department to support Donald Trump.Credit:AP

Barr has not made a final decision,and the prospect of him staying on through January 20 remains a possibility,the people familiar with his thinking cautioned. Should Barr step down before the end of the Trump administration,the deputy attorney-general,Jeffrey A. Rosen,would be expected to lead the Justice Department until President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The White House had no comment.

Barr,70,is the strongest proponent of presidential power to hold the office of attorney-general since Watergate. Soon after he was confirmed in February 2019,he gained Trump’s trust and his ear. He managed to heal fissures between the White House and the Justice Department that broke open when the president learned that his campaign was under investigationrelated to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Like Trump,Barr believed that the FBI had abused its power in investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. An independent inspector general has found that the bureau had sufficient reason to open the inquiry and that senior officials there acted without political bias in doing so.

But weeks after taking office,Barr released a summary of the report by the special counsel,Robert S. Mueller III,that a judge later called distorted and misleading. He presented it in the best possible light for Trump before the public could read it.

Barr soon asked John H. Durham,the US attorney in Connecticut,to open an investigation into the Russia inquiry itself to seek out any wrongdoing under the Obama administration.

While that investigation has not yet produced the kind of results that Trump has explicitly said he would like to see — including criminal charges against former President Barack Obama and Biden,as well as the former FBI director James B. Comey — Barr has ensured that Durham's work will continue into the next administration. In October,he secretly appointed Durham a special counsel assigned to seek out any wrongdoing in the course of the Russia investigation.

Barr revealed that appointment last week at the same time that he said he had not seen evidence that voter fraud had affected the results of the election. Pairing the Durham announcement with that revelation was widely seen as an effort to placate Trump,who was said to be enraged that Barr had publicly contradicted him.

The New York Times

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