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Bill Barr’s comments confirmed the findings of the Department of Homeland Security, US intelligence and independent election observers that the 2020 elections were, in the language of government officials, the “safest in US history.”
FILE: United States Attorney General William Barr delivers a press conference on the December 2019 shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – The US attorney general on Tuesday rejected Republican allegations of significant voter fraud in the presidential election, adding to pressure on President Donald Trump to abandon his quixotic effort to overturn Joe Biden’s clear victory.
Bill Barr’s comments confirmed the findings of the Department of Homeland Security, US intelligence, and independent election observers that the 2020 elections were, in the language of government officials, the “safest in US history.”
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have had a different outcome in the elections,” he told the Associated Press.
Barr’s interview came as Trump persisted in claiming, without proof, that fraudulent voting practices and systems in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia had robbed him of a second term.
In tweets Tuesday afternoon, Trump highlighted testimony given at a public hearing on the Michigan election, which already certified Biden’s victory in the state, and a separate event hosted by Republicans in Virginia.
“People are showing up like never before. A big truck transporting hundreds of thousands of fraudulent (FAKE) ballots to a polling place? TERRIBLE – SAVE AMERICA!” he wrote.
In several legal filings, all rejected by the courts, the Trump campaign has sought to invalidate millions of votes for Biden based on claims that lacked evidence.
According to official vote counts, Biden got 6.2 million more votes than Trump and got 306 Electoral College votes state-by-state, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency.
But the Trump campaign has struggled to delay the completion of the popular vote count before the Electoral College meets on December 14 to certify the winner of the election.
His attorneys, led by Rudy Giuliani, have made numerous accusations ranging from filling the polls and printing fake ballots, to thousands of dead who have voted, to vote counting machines programmed to favor Biden.
‘SOMEONE IS GOING TO BE KILLED’
The campaign to challenge the results has sparked growing unrest within the Republican party, including an emotional reprimand directed at Trump from the man in charge of Georgia’s voting systems.
Gabriel Sterling called a press conference to tell the president that he had not spoken out against the violent threats to election officials.
“You have to step up and say this … ‘Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone will get hurt, someone will be shot, someone will be killed. And it’s not right.’ “. “Sterling said.
On Tuesday separately, staunch Trump supporter and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell more clearly acknowledged that Biden would move into the White House next month.
Discussing stalled negotiations on a stimulus package to revive the virus-hit US economy, McConnell said: “There is likely to be a discussion about some additional package of some size depending on what the new administration wants to pursue.”
Barr, a Trump ally, did not address specific claims, but dismissed the idea of any “systemic” fraud that would have changed the outcome of the vote.
Barr noted that any problem for which there is evidence would affect a negligible number of votes.
“There was a claim that it would be a systemic fraud, and that would be the claim that the machines were essentially programmed to skew the election results,” he told the AP.
“So far, we have not seen anything to corroborate that,” he added.
GIULIANA REFUSES BARR
Trump did not immediately react to Barr. But in a joint statement, Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, the outgoing president’s chief campaign counsel, dismissed the comments.
“With all due respect to the attorney general, there has been nothing like a Justice Department investigation,” they said.
“We have gathered extensive evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined.”
Recent news reports have said that Trump is unhappy with Barr for failing to make efforts to support the president’s reelection.
But, probably to Trump’s pleasure, on Tuesday he revealed that he had appointed an independent special counsel to investigate the Justice Department and FBI investigators who investigated the links between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Trump has claimed that those investigators, including former special counsel Robert Mueller, were part of a corrupt, political “witch hunt” from the “deep state” to undermine his administration.
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