In a surprise move, attorney general Bill Barr has said an interview with the Associated Press that the department of justice has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the last election, at least not enough to overturn the results.
His comments are seen as a big blow to Mr Trump, who has not accepted defeat.
…“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,” Mr Barr, who is seen as a top Trump ally, told AP News on Tuesday, referring to the assertion that ballot machines were hacked to give more votes to Mr Biden.
…Mr Barr said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security have investigated that claim, “and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”.
…Reacting to his comments, Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a joint statement: “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.”
The reason that this is a surprise is not because what he is saying is untrue but that he said it at all, since it goes completely counter to what Trump has been saying. Barr has up to now seemed to have seen himself as more of Trump’s personal lawyer rather than the nation’s top law enforcement official, often going to great lengths to use the department to support some of Trump’s most extreme claims. He could have just kept quiet on the election fraud issue and need not have weighed in on this matter publicly.
So why did he, since he had to know that this would anger Trump who sees anyone who disagrees with him as disloyal? After all, Trump fired Christopher Krebs for saying that this election was the most secure ever. As Democratic senate leader Chuck Schumer wryly noted after Barr’s statement, “I guess he’s the next one to be fired.” Maybe Barr is hoping for that to happen, because like so many people who have been deeply tainted by their proximity to Trump, he is trying at the last minute to salvage something of his tattered reputation.
Rats leaving a sinking ship. Hopefully NOT able to rehabilitate whatever it is that passes for a reputation.
After all Barr has done, he still has a reputation?
@Mobius:
Of course he has a reputation.
Nobody said it was a good one.
Don’t care if Barr is now making (inadequate) moves away from being an Angry Cheeto bootlicker. The fucker needs to be prosecuted for the shit he’s already done in service to the Cheeto.
This is just more and damning evidence that AG Barr wasn’t serving the Constitution, the rule of law, the country, or the public. He wasn’t really even doing it for “the President.” Rather, just like “the President,” he was only doing it for himself and his own interests. Its just that now his interests no longer happen to align with the personal interests of “the President.”
*It’s
Barr is doing what he can to maintain as much cred as he can with the Retrumplican base, in order to further his Christofascist agenda post-Trump. He supported Trump as long as he had to, and now that it’s becoming clear, both that Trump lost, and that the swing states weren’t gonna overturn their results, he no longer has to stick with Trump and now has to bail on him and hope for the next Republican nominee to pick him up.