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WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (Reuters) – US Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors on Monday to investigate any possible “substantial” allegations of voting irregularities in last week’s election, but urged them to not to make “outlandish or extravagant claims.”
By Sarah N. Lynch and Jan Wolfe
Barr’s letter followed days of attacks on the integrity and legality of the election by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who have alleged without evidence that there was widespread electoral fraud.
Trump has not granted the election to Democrat Joe Biden, who on Saturday got more than 270 votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency.
Earlier Monday, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit to prevent Pennsylvania officials from certifying Biden’s victory in the state.
“I authorize them to pursue substantive allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in their jurisdictions in certain cases, as I have already done in specific cases,” Barr wrote in the letter to federal prosecutors. and the director of the FBI.
He said nothing in his letter should be read to indicate that the Justice Department had in fact discovered voting irregularities that affected the outcome of the elections.
The letter marked the first time Barr addressed allegations of voter fraud since last Tuesday’s showdown between Trump and Biden.
“While serious allegations should be handled with great care, misleading, speculative, fanciful or implausible claims should not be a basis for initiating federal investigations,” Barr wrote.
Democrats and the Biden campaign said Barr was fueling the highly implausible claims he claimed to protect himself against.
“Those are the kinds of claims that the president and his attorneys make unsuccessfully every day as their claims are mocked by court after court,” said Bob Bauer, senior adviser to Biden.
On Monday, the Trump campaign and two registered voters filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail system violated the United States Constitution by creating “an illegal two-tier voting system” in which voting in person was subject to more supervision than voting by mail.
He ran against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections in Democratic-leaning counties including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Boockvar’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘REHASH’
The Trump campaign has filed several lawsuits since claiming the election results were flawed. Justices have filed lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia, and experts say Trump’s legal efforts have little chance of changing the election outcome.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the latest lawsuit is unlikely to be successful and “reads like a replay of many of the arguments that Trump’s legal team has made in and out of. the courtroom. “
Also on Monday, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania said they would “call for a legislature-led audit of the 2020 election and demand that election results not be certified or voters sit down until the audit is complete.”
In the United States, a candidate becomes president by obtaining the largest number of electoral votes rather than winning the majority of the national popular vote. Voters generally cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in their respective states. They are scheduled to meet on December 14.
The Pennsylvania case was assigned to Federal District Judge Matthew Brann, appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama.
A senior Trump campaign official said the campaign had collected “hundreds” of affidavits from Pennsylvania voters alleging election violations.
The campaign is gathering evidence to help argue that the state’s election was fatally flawed, the official said.
Barr’s letter came several hours after meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Monday that Trump was within his right to investigate allegations of “wrongdoing” in last week’s election.
A Justice Department official declined to comment on what Barr and McConnell discussed, but told reporters that no one at the White House or on Capitol Hill asked him to write the letter.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who previously served as an assistant deputy attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, said the memorandum appeared to provide “cover” for US prosecutors to come out and publicly announce the investigations.
“It is very unusual. The Justice Department does not announce the initiation of the investigations, ”said Levitt.
(Report by Sarah N. Lynch and Jan Wolfe in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York; written by John Whitesides; edited by Noeleen Walder, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)
