ELECTIONS
Barr and Giuliani clash over allegations of
election fraud
A rebuke from the president’s lawyer came after the
attorney general said there was no evidence of large-scale fraud during this
year’s election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could
have affected a different outcome in the election,” said Attorney General
William Barr.
By MATTHEW
CHOI
12/01/2020
04:08 PM EST
Updated:
12/01/2020 07:51 PM EST
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/01/barr-giuliani-election-fraud-441840
Attorney
General William Barr on Tuesday said that there was no evidence of large-scale
fraud during this year’s election, prompting a stern rebuke from President
Donald Trump’s legal team as the president continues in his efforts to negate
the results.
Normally a
dependable deputy to the president, Barr contradicted Trump’s persistent
allegations of a stolen election in an interview to The Associated Press.
Trump’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, has insisted on investigations into
what they say are troubling irregularities but are actually normal errors expected
in any election. The president’s critics have called out the efforts as a
thinly veiled power grab.
“To date,
we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome
in the election,” Barr said, according to the AP.
Giuliani
and Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to the campaign, hit back at Barr only
minutes after the AP reported his remarks. The two claimed that the Justice
Department had not sufficiently investigated allegations of election
irregularities and had failed to interview witnesses who claimed to see illegal
behavior.
Trump’s
legal team has peddled eyebrow-raising conspiracy theories about the election,
in spite of election officials in states across the country affirming the vote
was fair. Attorney Sidney Powell, in particular, has made waves for falsely
alleging instances of foreign interference and voting machines changing votes
against voters’ will. Trump’s legal team distanced itself from Powell shortly
after.
“With the
greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any
knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of
systemic fraud,” Giuliani and Ellis said in a statement.
But their
statement is at odds with Barr’s remarks to the AP, in which he attests that
most claims were of one-off instances and have been followed up on. A Justice
Department spokesperson also said Tuesday that the department would continue to
review and investigate any allegations of malfeasance, and reemphasized that
Barr never ruled out the possibility of election fraud.
“There’s a
growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default
fix-all, and people don’t like something, they want the Department of Justice
to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.
The
attorney general’s breaking from Trump’s claims stands in stark contrast to his
previous, careful support of many of the president’s allegations. In the
lead-up to the election, Barr supported the president’s claims that mail-in
ballots were vulnerable to mass fraud — an unsubstantiated notion that could
have had a serious impact as an unprecedented number of Americans voted by mail
amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump has
lashed out at members of his own party for failing to support his legal
challenges. Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia,
in particular, have been targets after they certified their states’ votes for
Joe Biden. Trump fired Chris Krebs as the head of U.S. cybersecurity shortly
after he said this year’s election was among the safest in history.
Just after
the AP reported his remarks, Barr was spotted by reporters at the White House.
A White House official told POLITICO that Barr met with White House Chief of
Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone for a prescheduled
meeting.
Barr has
been among Trump‘s most loyal allies, playing a critical role during the
federal investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
During his AP interview, he revealed that he had granted special counsel
authority to the U.S. attorney investigating the origins and conduct of federal
probes into the 2016 election.
The move
largely shields John Durham, the attorney, from getting fired, particularly as
a Democratic administration takes over in January.
Durham‘s
probe has faint legitimacy in the eyes of Democrats, who largely view it as
retaliation for the investigations into the 2016 election that defined the
first half of the Trump presidency.
Nancy Cook
and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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