Attorney General Bill Barr stepped all over his party’s post-election message, conceding to the Associated Press that the Justice Department has looked for evidence of widespread voter fraud, but come up empty.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP. The Republican lawyer added, “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.’”
Two of Donald Trump’s high-profile lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, pried themselves away from losing more cases and issued a statement denouncing Barr’s conclusions.
“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,” Giuliani and Ellis said in a statement.
Of course, if the president’s hapless legal team had proof of “substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,” they probably wouldn’t keep losing in court.
But just as interesting was the reaction from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who told CNN he wants an investigation into “irregularities.” “I think there’s enough irregularities, there are enough questions, enough suspicions that in order to come to the final results of the facts, so that hopefully the vast majority of Americans are satisfied with the result,” Johnson said. “Maybe Bill Barr is. Because he’s probably got more access to information than I have, then he should show everybody.” First, there’s still no evidence of widespread “irregularities.” Second, there may be “questions” and “suspicions,” but that’s because Trump and his allies have told a lot of lies to too many people. And third, if the Wisconsin Republican wants Barr to “show everybody” the Justice Department’s evidence, won’t that be a problem given that the Justice Department didn’t find any evidence?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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