Washington:
President Donald Trump’s lawyer basic Bill Barr told him a month soon after the 2020 election that allegations of voter fraud had been groundless, but Trump rejected that, the Atlantic magazine reported.
Barr told reporter Jonathan Karl in interviews that as quickly as Trump’s defeat by Democrat Joe Biden was clear soon after the November 3 vote, he ordered the Justice Department to conduct an informal overview of Trump’s sweeping claims of illegal ballots and voting machine rigging in numerous states.
“We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit,” Barr told Karl, an ABC News reporter who will publish a book on Trump’s last days in workplace later this year.
According to the Atlantic post, published Sunday, soon after the election Barr was repeatedly urged privately by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to quell Trump’s allegations.
McConnell “told Barr that Trump’s claims were damaging to the country and to the Republican Party,” pointing specifically to two challenging runoff races for Senate seats, Karl wrote, citing Barr.
In early December Barr ultimately acted, telling one reporter in an exclusive interview that the Justice Department had not located any substantial fraud.
The news jolted the White House and Trump summoned Barr demanding to know why he stated that.
“Because it’s true,” Barr told Trump.
“You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump,” the president responded.
Trump persisted in his claims, which propelled lawsuits and forced recounts in many crucial states that in the end revealed no substantial proof of fraud.
Yet Trump’s claims culminated in the violent January 6 attack on the US Capitol by hundreds of his supporters looking for to delay certification of Biden’s election win.
Critics noted Barr had been a close Trump political supporter who himself warned in September 2020, with no concrete proof, that mail-in voting preferred in the COVID-19 pandemic was “very open to fraud.”
Barr resigned as lawyer basic on December 14, issuing a statement of sturdy praise for Trump, saying he was a victim of “partisan onslaught” by the Democrats, and not difficult Trump once again on the election fraud claims.
Late Sunday, Trump blasted the Atlantic story and repeated his claims of irregularities in the 2020 election
Barr, Trump stated, “failed to investigate election fraud, and really let down the American people.”
“It’s people in authority like Bill Barr that allow the crazed Radical Left to succeed,” he stated in a statement.
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