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Image posted, Reuters
US Attorney General William Barr confirmed that his department found no evidence to support President Donald Trump’s widespread fraud allegations during the presidential election.
“So far, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could affect the outcome of the elections,” Barr said.
Barr’s comments are seen as a major blow to Trump, who has yet to acknowledge defeat in the election.
Trump and his campaign have filed lawsuits in the states he lost, just as those states began to confirm Joe Biden’s victory.
Since the Nov. 3 election, Trump has repeated unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud, and members of his legal defense team have spoken of an alleged plot to win Biden.
Barr said Tuesday: “There are allegations that fraud has occurred and that the machines have been programmed primarily to distort election results,” referring to allegations that the voting machines had been hacked to give Biden more votes.
Barr said the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have investigated this allegation, “and so far, we haven’t seen anything to back it up.”
And he added: “There is a growing tendency for those who do not like anything to ask the Ministry of Justice to investigate it.”
In response to Barr’s comments, Trump’s campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani and Gina Ellis said in a joint statement: “With great respect to the Attorney General, your opinion appears without any knowledge or investigation of significant wrongdoing and evidence of systematic fraud “.
In Trump’s first post-election television interview on Sunday, he told Fox News that he would continue to follow all available legal challenges.
“My opinion will not change in six months,” he said by phone, adding: “There has been fraud on a large scale.”
He also raised the idea of appointing a special adviser to investigate the elections, something that would require Barr’s approval.
Barr is not the first senior US official to declare the election fraud-free.
Chris Krebs, who heads the U.S. Agency for Cyberspace and Infrastructure Security, was fired last month after he challenged Trump’s fraud accusations. He said the 2020 elections “were the safest in the history of the United States.”
Trump’s attorney, Joe Degenova, faced swift conviction and widespread criticism after he called for violence against Cripps.
“Anyone who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who was in charge of cybersecurity, this guy is a first-class jerk,” he told the Howie Car Show radio show. “He should be captured at dawn and shot,” he added.
