Trump Attacks Barr after Election Fraud Remarks: ‘He Hasn’t Done Anything’
President Trump on Thursday rebuked Attorney General William Barr following Barr’s remarks this week that the Justice Department has not found evidence to back up the Trump campaign’s claims of massive voter fraud.
“He hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t looked,” Trump said at the White House on Thursday regarding Barr investigating the campaign’s allegations of widespread voter fraud that supposedly tilted the election in favor of President-elect Joe Biden. The president added that DOJ officials “haven’t looked very hard, which is a disappointment, to be honest with you.”
Asked whether he still has confidence in his attorney general, Trump responded, “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now. They should be looking at all of this fraud. This is not civil, he thought it was civil. This is not civil, this is criminal stuff. This is very bad, criminal stuff.”
On Tuesday, Barr said the Justice Department has not found evidence of voter fraud widespread enough to change the outcome of this year’s presidential election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.
The Trump campaign legal team quickly responded, saying the DOJ has not conducted an investigation that would give them the assurance mass fraud has not occurred and said the president’s lawyers have compiled evidence of illegal voting in six battleground states.
“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 Tuesday.
After Barr’s remarks, he reportedly had a “contentious” meeting with Trump that lasted several hours. Barr was said to be already scheduled to meet with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, but once he was on the White House grounds the president requested to see him.
Trump allies Lin Wood and Sidney Powell attacked Barr during a “stop the steal” rally outside Atlanta on Wednesday on the grounds that the attorney general has not done enough to investigate their claims of a massive conspiracy in which numerous foreign enemies of the U.S. collaborated with Republican state officials in Georgia to steal the election by manipulating voting software.
Wood urged Barr to “do your job” as he whipped up the crowd into a frenzy.
Earlier this year, the attorney general agreed with Trump and said the high levels of mail ballots due to people opting to stay home during the pandemic could become a breeding ground for voter fraud.
Since Joe Biden eked out a victory in the election earlier this month, flipping several key battleground states Trump won in 2016 by razor-thin margins, the Trump campaign has launched a slew of more than 40 lawsuits challenging the vote results in six swing states.
Trump has so far refused to concede the election to Biden and has claimed he won a second term “by a lot” even as his legal team struggles to produce evidence to back up their claims.
