US Attorney General, William Barr has disclosed the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.
In an interview, Mr Barr said, US attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they have received, but they have uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.
The Attorney General, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies had repeatedly raised the notion before the elections that mail-in votes could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.
In November, Mr Barr issued a directive to US attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud.
President Trump has, however, criticized the election in tweets and in interviews though his own administration has said the 2020 election was the most secure ever. Trump recently allowed his administration to begin the transition over to Biden but has still refused to admit he lost.
Also in the interview, Mr Barr refuted claims by the Republican Party that the voting systems were tampered with to skew election results.
“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.
“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.”
He added that first of all, there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.
“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations… And those have been run down; they are being run down.
“Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”
President Trump attorneys, Giuliani and Jenna Ellis responded to Barr in a written statement saying, “With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation … 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.”
