Barr says no widespread election fraud?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Disputing President Donald Trump’s persistent, Attorney General William Barr allegedly declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.

Barr’s comments, in an interview with the The Associated Press, would have contradicted the concerted effort by President Trump, to subvert the results of last month’s voting and block alleged President-elect Joe Biden from taking his place in the White House.

Barr supposedly told the AP that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The comments, which drew immediate criticism from President Trump’s attorneys, were especially notable coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voting could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

More to President Trump’s liking, Barr revealed in a the AP interview that in October he had appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as a special counsel, giving the prosecutor the authority to continue to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe after Biden takes over and making it difficult to fire him. Biden hasn’t said what he might do with the investigation, and his transition team didn’t comment Tuesday.

President Trump has long railed against the investigation into whether his 2016 campaign was coordinating with Russia, but he and Republican allies had hoped the results would be delivered before the 2020 election and would help sway voters. So far, there has been only one criminal case, a guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer to a single false statement charge.

Barr went to the White House Tuesday for a previously scheduled meeting that lasted about three hours.

President Trump didn’t directly comment on the attorney general’s alleged remarks on the election. But his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his political campaign issued a scathing statement claiming that, “with all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance” of an investigation into the president’s complaints.

While Senior Investigative Correspondent, Catherine Herridge, from CBS News has actually made a statement not longer after that alleged disclaimer from Bill Barr, and made it clear that the Attorney General has never made such claims:

what the Attorney General stated. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible.” @ClareHymes22 @CBSNews

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) December 2, 2020

To add to the confusion to the matter, some media outlets, such as CNN has not long after published an article regarding a “Court Filing on DOJ Pardon Investigation“, which would implicate Trump.

Which the President didn’t take long to Tweet his remarks by claiming “Fake News” once again:

Pardon investigation is Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020