For decades, federal lawyers have been told not to investigate fraud in the final months before the election, as it could derail the turnout or lead to a loss of confidence in the results. Now, the Justice Department has lifted that ban in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr has promoted the false statement that voter fraud is rampant, potentially damaging Americans’ confidence in the election.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Justice Department attorneys in Washington said in a memo to prosecutors on Friday that they could investigate allegations of electoral fraud before a suffrage is determined. It overturns a decades-old policy that prohibits voters from conducting such inquiries on a large scale to prevent their existence from being made public and possibly from “cooling off legitimate voting and campaign activities” or preventing voters from “presenting themselves as an issue”. Was placed.
The memo makes exceptions to “general exceptions to general interference in electoral policy” for suspicions of electoral fraud, particularly misconduct by federal government workers, including postal workers or military personnel; Both groups transport mail-in ballet. Exceptions may lead investigators to proceed with investigative steps, such as interrogating witnesses, who were beyond the scope of such inquiries until after the election results had been verified.
The move allows public prosecutors to fund more election fraud in the week leading up to the Nov. polls. U.S. in New Jersey. Attorney, Craig Carpenito, promoted Wednesday’s arrest of a postal worker suspected of mailing mail, dozens of ballots, which were found and returned to the mail.
The New York Times reviewed parts of the memo. PropBlica reported its details earlier Wednesday.
The Justice Department’s long-standing normative investigators take any election-related action or keep candidates out of concern within two months of election day that even the assumption of law enforcement involvement could erode confidence in the vote. Former FBI Director James B. Comey announced the bureau’s decision in 2016 not to recommend charges in his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server and to reopen the case 11 days before Mr. Trump’s upset victory.
The Justice Department said the new memo is not a political act and no political appointment directs, prepares or issues it.
Matt Lloyd, a spokesman for the department, said career attorneys at the department’s criminal integrity department regularly provide guidance in the field during the election season. “This email was part of an ongoing process of providing regular guidance on election-related matters.”
Department officials also said the career attorney for the criminal department advised all U.S. attorneys during the summer as part of a comprehensive briefing on election-related fraud, and the department has always acknowledged that there are exceptions to the policy.
The new guidelines raised suspicions that Mr. Trump’s political appointments, led by Mr. Burr, are running the Department of Justice’s power to help him bid for re-election. Democrats, civil rights officials and officials from the Republican and former administration of the Democratic administration claim the president’s relentless – and false – claims are undermining the United States’ electoral system, and that the department has taken precautions this year to take unusual political action. Fraud.
In particular, they have been wary of late breach cases based on allegations of voter fraud that make more headlines than significant allegations. Republicans have been seeking to push the notion that voter fraud is a problem in the United States for many years, although there is no evidence to support their claims.
During Mr. Trump’s presidency and his re-election bid, money-laundering efforts to detect voter fraud went into overdrive. Shortly after defeating Mrs. Clinton in 2016, she claimed that millions of Americans had voted illegally for her and that she had appointed a loyalist to investigate the matter. No evidence has ever been found to support Mr. Trump’s argument. But that doesn’t stop him from repeating claims, especially in recent months when he’s campaigning.
Democrats and election and legal experts say Mr. Trump and Mr. Barrow are backing the claim that the election was rigged if the president lost.
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama under the Obama administration, said the Justice Department “could fabricate a story in the absence of any evidence of fraud in mail-in voting.”
“They’ve told us this is their strategy, and we’re seeing it implemented,” Ms. Said Vance.
Wendy R., director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Weisser said he did not consider the tificant decision to change the policy to be appropriate. “If they want to stop the misconduct that they are concerned about, they can remind people of the law and announce that they will take full action against any violators of the law.” “He needs no exception to this long-term and prudent policy.”
Some election experts say the new policy on election fraud inquiries has undergone a dramatic change since Mr Comey’s impact on the 201 Come election.
Professor of Law, Richard L. Hessen said that historically, the DOJ has tried to avoid taking any action that could affect the election, so, for example, to lay charges or announce an investigation that could affect the election. University of California, Irvine.
He predicted that the memo could lead to many more announcements, such as last month’s highly unusual declaration by a federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania who investigated open voter fraud in nine ballots cast. The revelation helped fuel Mr. Trump’s false claim that mail-in voting was rife with fraud, although the state’s top election official later said the episode was a “bad mistake” and “not intentional fraud.”
The announcement was both unusual for revealing an open investigation and revealing that there had been some voting for Mr. Trump, a fact experts said the investigation is unethical and helped feed its baseless attacks on mail-in voting.
Policy Shift, Mr Hussein said, “These announcements are further encouraged by the fact that these small-boring things can be treated as evidence of molestation and then promoted at a higher level.”
Mr Barrow also echoed the president’s allegations of voter fraud.
In recent weeks, the attorney general has also made allegations that voting by mail through evidence could lead to fraud and abuse. In an interview with CNN last month, he insisted that the Justice Department indicted a Texas man who had collected nearly 2,000 ballots from people who could not vote and illegally cast them for his preferred candidate.
After being questioned on the account by the Washington Washington Post, a department spokesman said such an allegation did not exist and that Mr Barrow relied on a misinformed memo.
He also said he did not have “empirical evidence” that the mail-in ballot would lead to voter fraud, instead of “common sense”.
“I don’t have empirical evidence that on this scale, you know, these problems did happen,” he said at an event for Hillsdale College last month.
In an unusual show of indecision, federal attorneys in Massachusetts and Seattle have publicly accused Mr. Burr of working for the Trump campaign, citing his decision to intervene in cases against the president’s allies and publicizing Mr. Trump’s extended remarks. Lubbed against the Black Lives Matter on the campaign trail
One of them, Michael Dion, wrote in a letter to the Seattle Times that Mr. Barrow called the Justice Department “a shield for the protection of the president and his family.”
“Twelve do these things because their goal is to protect their master rather than the American people,” Mr. Dion wrote. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the letters.
Nick Corasniti and Jim Rutenberg contributed to the reporting.
