US Attorney General William Barr says his justice department has found no proof to back President Donald Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
The Justice Department hasn’t found evidence to support allegations of widespread fraud that could have changed the result of last month’s presidential election, Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press published Tuesday. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said. His comments are seen as a big blow to Mr Trump, who has not accepted defeat. He and his campaign have filed lawsuits in states that he lost, as they begin certifying Joe Biden as the winner.
President-elect Biden defeated the incumbent Mr Trump by a margin of 306 to 232 votes in the US electoral college, which chooses the US president. And in the popular vote, Mr Biden won at least 6.2 million more votes than Mr Trump. Since 3 November’s election, Mr Trump has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, and members of his legal defence team have spoken of an alleged international plot to hand Mr Biden the win. On Tuesday, after Mr Barr’s statements were released, the president tweeted several times alluding to voter fraud, again without proof. Barr had previously pushed similar claims to the ones Trump has repeatedly made, including in September, when he made a number of false and misleading statements to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview in which he condemned states using mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
