Attorney General William Barr broke from President Donald Trump today, claiming that the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Barr shared his findings, which run counter to a Trump administration that is still challenging election results in court, in an interview with the Associated Press. Though Barr had previously questioned the integrity of mail-in voting, he told the wire service he saw no efforts to warp vote totals on a level that would shift an election's outcome.
“To date, we have not seen frasidneud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.
He also seemed to discredit efforts by former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell without mentioning her explicitly. The dismissed litigator has filed election lawsuits of her own, alleging election fraud in several states. While she served Trump, she espoused conspiracy theories that included rigged voting machines, manipulation of servers where data is stored and the involvement of long-dead Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said.
He also dinged the overall effort to police election results after the fact by calling on the Department of Justice and the court system overall.
“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. "Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations."
In a statement on behalf of the Trump administration, Rudy Giuliani accused Barr's DOJ of failing to investigate valid claims of voter fraud.
“We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud. As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth,” he said.
Here's how people reacted to the rare instance of Barr seemingly doing the right thing.
