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Attorney General William Barr has allowed U.S. lawyers across the country to “pursue substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the 2020 election is certified, according to a memo released Monday. Barr offered no evidence of fraud stemming from last week’s election in the document.
“While most allegations of alleged electoral misconduct are of such magnitude that they would not impact the outcome of an election and, therefore, the investigation can be appropriately postponed, this is not always the case, ”Barr wrote. “Such investigations and reviews can be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities which, if true, could impact the outcome of a federal election in a given state.”
Barr’s authorization is an exception to a long-standing Justice Department policy to ensure that this does not appear to affect the outcome of the election. The department’s handbook on prosecuting electoral offenses advises, “not to conduct open investigations, including interviews with individual voters, until the outcome of the election allegedly affected by the fraud is certified.”
Barr’s memo quickly led to the resignation of the Department of Justice’s senior electoral crimes prosecutor, Richard Pilger.
In an e-mail to his colleagues tweeted by Vanita Gupta, former head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice in the Obama administration, Pilger writes: “After familiarizing myself with the new policy and its ramifications … I unfortunately have to step down from my role. ” Pilger is expected to remain a lawyer in the department’s criminal division.
The Department of Justice press office denied to CBS News that it knew Pilger had resigned. But a CBS News email to Pilger was greeted with what appeared to be an out-of-office message confirming that he had stepped down as director. The message read in part: “I am no longer the director of the Electoral Crimes Directorate and I have returned to the line at the Public Integrity Section.”
The New York Times was the first to report Pilger’s resignation.
Barr’s two-page memo provides no evidence of electoral fraud, allegations of which have been rampant since media, including CBS News, projected that President-elect Joe Biden won the presidential race. Although Barr said he looked at some of the cases, he admits that “nothing here should be taken as an indication that the Department concluded that voting irregularities had an impact on the outcome of any election.”
Ahead of the election, Barr helped cast doubt on postal ballots, an alternative to in-person voting that has been used extensively this year as a safe way to vote amid the coronavirus pandemic. In September, Barr told CNN that postal voting was akin to “playing with fire” and could easily be subject to fraud and coercion.
Earlier Monday, Barr was spotted on Capitol Hill meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The ministry declined to comment on the meeting, and a senior Justice Department official denied that any lawmakers or anyone in the White House, including the president, asked Barr to send that authorization.
While Biden has already been screened to win the presidency, the Electoral College will meet and officially vote on December 14, and later certify that result on December 23.
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