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William Barr, U.S. Attorney General, wears a protective mask upon arriving at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, United States, Monday, November 9, 2020.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Justice Department is “reviewing” allegations by Republicans that illegal votes were cast in Nevada and Pennsylvania, NBC News reported Tuesday.
The inquiries came to light after Attorney General William Barr, in a memo, authorized federal prosecutors to investigate “specific” allegations of voter fraud even before the election results of the race between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden are certified.
Barr’s Justice Department is eyeing GOP claims that ineligible voters voted in Nevada and that there was back-dating of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, a department source told NBC News.
After Barr’s memo, released Monday, the head of the DOJ’s division that prosecutes election crimes resigned, in apparent disagreement with the new policy and its ramifications. The official, Richard Pilger, will continue to work within the DOJ.
A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Trump refused to concede the election to Biden despite major media organizations, including NBC News, casting Biden as the winner in the November 3 election. The call came on Saturday, after the former vice president was due to win all 20 votes from the Pennsylvania Electoral College.
Biden’s projected victory in Keystone state and Nevada, which has six Electoral College votes, gave him 279 Electoral College votes, nine more than needed to win the White House.
The Trump campaign is waging a multi-state legal and procedural battle to invalidate the tens of thousands of popular ballots in a handful of states that give the former Democratic Vice President his margin of victory over Trump in the Electoral College. Biden also leads the popular vote with millions of votes.
Biden’s campaign, Democrats, and many legal observers allege that the Trump campaign’s claims that illegal votes led to Biden’s victory are frivolous.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that he would win the race if only legal ballots were counted.
The president repeated the claims with rants on Twitter Tuesday morning. Twitter then tagged two of those tweets with the message: “This allegation of electoral fraud is disputed.”
– Additional reporting by Kevin breuninger
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