Former Attorney General Bill Barr had harsh words for his old boss while appearing this past weekend on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

Yet despite his criticism of former President Donald Trump, Barr expressed hope that Trump could avoid going to jail. 

"Trump's conduct is indefensible"

"This is not a circumstance where he's the victim or this is government overreach," Barr said to host Robert Costa regarding Trump's indictment in Florida last week on charges related to his handling of classified documents.

"He provoked this whole problem himself," Barr continued. While the former attorney general acknowledged that Trump has "been the victim of unfair witch hunts in the past," he insisted that this case was different.

Barr went on to call the former president "a fundamentally flawed person who engages in reckless conduct that leads to situations, calamitous situations, like this, which are very disruptive and hurt any political cause he's associated with."

He also suggested that Trump's attorney's can't "defend his conduct because Trump's conduct is indefensible," adding, "What they're really saying is, he should get a pass because Hillary Clinton got a pass six or seven years ago."

"That's not a frivolous argument. But I'm not sure that's true," Barr contended. "I think if you want to restore the rule of law and equal justice, you don't do it by further derogating from justice."

Barr doesn't "like the idea" of Trump going to prison

"You do it by applying the right standard here and that's not unfair to Trump because this is not a case where Trump is innocent and being unfairly hounded. He committed the crime or if he did commit the crime, it's not unfair to hold him to that standard," Barr claimed.

Still, Barr argued that it may not be in the country's best interests to incarcerate Trump, stating, "I don't like the idea of a former president serving time in prison."

Barr also speculated that Trump could soon see more legal problems in the form of an indictment arising out of the federal January 6 investigation.

"I'm actually starting to think they will pull the trigger on that, and I would expect it to be this summer," the former attorney general asserted.

Poll finds over half of registered voters don't agree with indictment

"Yes," former Attorney General Bill Barr tells @costareports when asked if he believes Trump is potentially a target of the federal January 6 investigation.

"I'm actually starting to think they will pull the trigger on that, and I would expect it to be this summer." pic.twitter.com/ppYxvKuwqg

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 18, 2023

Interestingly, a Harvard-CAPS Harris poll conducted between June 14 and June 15 found that 30% of registered voters believe that Trump is innocent of the charges while another 26% suspect that he is guilty but regard his indictment as election interference.

Meanwhile, 65% of respondents think President Joe Biden is guilty of mishandling classified documents while 72% believe the same is true of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.