Barr says no evidence of fraud that would change US election outcome

By Agency Report

Donald Trump’s campaign responded to attorney general William Barr’s comments that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election in a statement from Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis.

“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,” the statement said.

The statement goes on to say Trump’s Justice department has not investigated the Trump campaign’s “evidence” of fraud, which Barr pointed out in the interview is not the role of the federal criminal justice system.

Those claims are meant to be tested in courts, Barr said, and they have been.

The Trump campaign statement continued: “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.”

In an interview with the AP, attorney general William Barr disputed allegations made by Donald Trump and some of his allies that there has been widespread fraud in the election and said people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system.

Trump has attempted to undermine the election results by pointing to routine issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and postal marks – as evidence of widespread voter fraud that cost him the election.

Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez,” – the former Venezuelan president who died in 2013.

“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. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said.

Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the Justice department. Barr 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.’

He told the AP first of all 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.”