Federal Prosecutors Urge Barr To End ‘Election Fraud’ Charade

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

Even election losing, lame duck, impeached Donald Trump's pet Attorney General William Barr can't find an excuse to help him overthrow the results of this election. Sixteen assistant U.S. attorneys who were tapped specifically to monitor the 2020 election for malfeasance have written to Barr urging him to rescind his memo authorizing federal prosecutors to conduct probes of supposed election fraud in an attempt to stop certification of elections in certain cases.

That memorandum led to the resignation of Election Crimes head Richard Pilger, who wrote in a memo announcing his resignation that he did so after "having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications." Prior to Barr's memo, "overt" investigations into elections were barred until the the election had been concluded and certified. Barr was trying to get prosecutors involved while ballots were being counted. The Washington Post reports that the prosecutors told Barr in a letter that his order early this week "thrusts career prosecutors into partisan politics."

They wrote that in their jurisdictions, there was no evidence of the kind of fraud Barr had called out in his order. "The policy change was not based in fact," the assistant U.S. attorneys wrote in their letter. It was signed by "Assistant U.S. Attorneys in 15 different federal court districts: Western Pennsylvania, Western North Carolina, New Mexico, Maryland, Southern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, Southern Iowa, Western Arkansas, Southern New York, Eastern New York, Oregon, Kansas, Northern California, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianna Islands. Two signers were from Oregon."

This follows the statement released Thursday by a group of federal, state, and local elections officials that flatly stated the election "was the most secure in American history" and that "there is no evidence" any voting systems were compromised. At any level, foreign, domestic, in hardware or software failure or human interference. "While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should, too," the officials said. "When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections."

The possibilities for Trump to find any kind of institutional support to continue his claims have basically been shut off. He's losing badly and embarrassingly in the courts. All he has left is Barr and congressional Republicans, and some of them have been wavering. It's time for him to go and it's time for every elected Republican to tell him so.