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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cracks erupted between two of President Donald Trump’s key legal allies on Tuesday when Attorney General William Barr said his department had found no evidence of the widespread election fraud alleged by Trump, while Rudolph Giuliani vowed to continue his search. .
Barr made his comments in an interview with the Associated Press shortly before revealing that he had elevated U.S. Attorney John Durham to the status of special counsel and assigned him to further investigate the origins of the United States government’s own investigation into the role he played Russia in Trump’s 2016. electoral victory.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr was quoted as saying by the news service.
Giuliani criticized Barr for failing to properly investigate the evidence he said had uncovered of widespread voter fraud.
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there has been no such thing as a Justice Department investigation,” Giuliani, former federal prosecutor and colleague Jenna Ellis, said in a joint statement.
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden beat Republican Trump by a wide margin in the November 3 election, by 306-232 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that elects the president, as well as by more than 6.2 million votes in the popular vote.
Despite that, Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud, allegations that have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials.
Dunham’s appointment as special counsel gives Connecticut’s top federal prosecutor more independence, subjecting him to the same rules that governed Robert Mueller’s appointment in May 2017 to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Dunham will continue to investigate whether top Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials committed crimes when they launched an investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016.
The appointment took effect on October 19, according to a copy of the appointment order.
Trump has pursued a series of legal challenges to the November 3 election results in numerous states, though none so far have resulted in significant gains for the president. The judges have rejected most of the claims, expressing skepticism about claims that the election results are illegitimate.
Barr told federal prosecutors last month to continue investigations of credible allegations of voter fraud, but warned them to avoid investigations of “fanciful or implausible claims.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)
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