AG Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome
Even Bill Barr knows it’s over for President Trump.
The typically Trump-loyal attorney general admitted Tuesday that the Justice Department hasn’t uncovered any evidence to back up the president’s baseless claim that widespread voter fraud facilitated Joe Biden’s election victory.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Barr is the most senior Trump administration official to break with the president’s refusal to admit defeat over unfounded allegations that Democrats in as many as six states somehow rigged the election for Biden.
The implicit rebuke is particularly stinging, as Barr has been one of Trump’s most ardent allies and a key player in his bid to undermine the various federal investigations targeting his campaign’s ties to Russia.
In an apparent effort to please Trump, Barr separately told the AP that he had given special counsel status to John Durham, the U.S. attorney tasked with investigating the origins of the FBI’s original Trump-Russia probe.
The designation gives Durham additional protections that will likely allow him to continue his investigation after Biden takes office on Jan. 20. The Durham probe — which critics view as a Trumpian effort to tarnish the legitimacy of the Russia inquiries — has not produced any substantial indictments.
Despite the Durham olive branch, Trump’s legal team bristled at Barr for acknowledging the reality of Biden’s election win.
“With all due respect to the attorney general, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,” Rudy Giuliani, who leads the Trump team, said in a statement. “His opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”
Democrats, meanwhile, were furious with Barr for his Durham designation.
“Barr is using the special counsel law for a purpose it was not intended: to continue a politically motivated investigation long after Barr leaves office,” said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “Having politicized the Department of Justice from his first days in office, it is a fitting coda that Barr should seek to do so in his last. Yet, none of this will ever change the truth about what the Trump campaign did, why Trump lied about it, and why he obstructed justice.”
The attorney general was later spotted at the White House, but it was unclear if he was meeting with Trump.
Before the election, Barr parroted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud.
He also issued an unusual memo last month directing U.S. attorneys across the country to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities — a directive that prompted the Justice Department’s top elections crime official to step down in protest as it went around longstanding agency protocols.
In Tuesday’s interview, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have investigated a number of specific complaints alleging fraud in the election.
But he said they’ve uncovered no evidence of any irregularities that are substantial enough to change the outcome of the election, which Biden won by more than 6 million votes, producing a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College.
“They are not systemic allegations,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he suspects Barr may face the ax over his admission.
“I guess he’s the next one to be fired. Since he now, too, says there’s no fraud,” Schumer said.
Christopher Krebs, the Trump administration’s top cyber-security official, got the boot last month after acknowledging that the 2020 election was secure and unhampered by widespread irregularities.
Trump, undeterred by Barr’s comments, kept thumbing out fact-challenged tweets from the White House, including one that confusingly called on Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to cancel the Jan. 5 runoff elections in the state that will determine which party controls the Senate next year.
“Call off election. It won’t be needed. We will all WIN!” Trump tweeted.
Like Krebs, election officials from both sides of the aisle in all 50 states say there were no signs of widespread problems with the election.
The issues Trump’s allies have pointed to are typical, such as minor problems with signatures and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as small numbers of votes miscast or lost.
