Attorney General William Barr is refuting President Trump’s continued claims that widespread voter fraud affected the outcome of the presidential election. In an interview, Barr said that the Department of Justice has yet to uncover any evidence that would corroborate the Trump campaign’s voter fraud claims.
Barr’s comments come after he issued a directive last month to U.S. attorneys allowing them to pursue any existing “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the election results were certified. The directive effectively gave prosecutors the ability to go around the DOJ policy which would block investigations before the election was certified
Fox News reports:
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” Barr told the AP. “And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.”
Barr added that people have been confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits, adding that such a remedy for those complaints would be a top-down audit conducted by state or local officials, not the U.S. Justice Department.
“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,”‘ Barr said, adding that there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.
“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and. And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”
Recently, President Trump has become increasingly critical of the Justice Department’s lack of progress towards uncovering possible election fraud saying they have been “missing in action.” In a recent interview, Trump said, “You would think if you’re in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is the biggest thing you could be looking at,” Trump said. “Where are they? I’ve not seen anything.”
