Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an exclusive interview (VIDEO BELOW) that Americans will recognize “some” of the names of people that U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating for federal surveillance abuses. He also says that he is “very troubled” by “what has been called to” his attention so far.

MOTIVE FOR AGGRESSIVE INVESTIGATION:

“I think before the election, I think we’re concerned about the motive force behind the very aggressive investigation that was launched into the Trump campaign without, you know, with a very thin, slender reed as a basis for it. It seemed that the bureau was sort of spring-loaded at the end of July to drive in there and investigate a campaign.”

Barr said he couldn’t comment on whether criminal charges were coming:

“We can’t discuss future charges. But I have to say that I do find a little irritating. You know, the propensity in the American public on all sides of the political spectrum when they see something they think could be a criminal violation, I say, why hasn’t this person been indicted again? And, you know, there’s the old saying that that the wheels of justice grind slow and they do run slow because we have due process and we follow the process. But people should not draw from the fact that no action has been taken that taken yet, that that means that people or people are going to get away with wrongdoing.”

Barr said he wasn’t concerned about criticisms of the Durham probe in an election year:

“For the first time in American history, police organizations and the national security organizations were used to spy on a campaign, and there was no basis for it. The media largely drove that…and all kinds of sensational claims were being made about the president that could have affected the election. And then and then later on, in his administration, there were actions taken that really appear to be efforts to sabotage his campaign. And that has to be looked at. And if people want to say that I’m political because I am looking at those potential abuses of power, so be it. But that’s the job of the attorney general.”

“THE OTHER AREA OF CONCERN”

“The other area of concern is that after the election, even though they were closing down some of that, as we’ve seen in the Flynn case, and say there’s nothing here, for some reason, they went right back at it, even at a time where the evidentiary support or claim support like the dossier was falling apart. And it’s very hard to understand why they continued to push and even make public testimony that they had an investigation going when it was becoming painfully obvious or should have been obvious to anyone that there was nothing there.”

Barr said that the DOJ was “looking at” names that some might recognize and was also taking a look at requests by several Obama administration officials…including Joe Biden and Obama’s chief of staff…to obtain the identity of an individual who turned out to be Flynn through a process known as “unmasking.”

“You know, unmasking is not by itself illegal, but the patterns of unmasking can tell us something about people’s motivations at any given point of time. So we’re trying to take a look at the whole waterfront on unmasking what was done, especially in 2016.”

“I mean, for example, let’s say suppose for a period in the spring, there was a lot of heavy unmasking done on people involved with the Trump campaign. That would be very relevant as to what people were thinking at that time and what their motivations were.”