President Donald Trump’s campaign on Dec. 1 fired back at Attorney General William Barr after the nation’s top law enforcement official reportedly claimed that officials haven’t seen evidence of widespread election fraud.
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,“ Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer, and Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, said in a joint statement. ”We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined. We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.
“As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.
“Nonetheless, we will continue our pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures, and continue toward the Constitution’s mandate and ensuring that every legal vote is counted and every illegal vote is not. Again, with the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”
Barr was said to have made the remarks in an interview with The Associated Press, which has a history of animus toward Trump.
According to the outlet, Barr said: “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”
Barr also reportedly said: “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.'”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t respond when asked to confirm the reported comments or why Barr didn’t make them in a press conference.
Barr was seen entering the White House around 2:45 p.m. on Dec. 1.
Barr sent a memo to federal prosecutors about a week after the Nov. 3 election that was made public through a leak.
“Such inquiries and reviews may be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State,” he said.
He also reiterated that he viewed mass mail-in voting as an invitation for voter fraud and coercion.
“We haven’t had the kind of widespread use of mail-in ballots as being proposed,” Barr said. “We’ve had absentee ballots from people who request them from a specific address. Now what we’re talking about is mailing them to everyone on the voter list, when everyone knows those voter lists are inaccurate.
“This is playing with fire,” Barr said. “We’re a very closely divided country here, and people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government. And people trying to change the rules to this methodology—which as a matter of logic is very open to fraud and coercion—is reckless and dangerous.”
