Federal prosecutors investigating electoral fraud denounce William Barr’s policy change



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The letter from the 16 prosecutors comes days after Barr issued a memo earlier this week telling prosecutors not involved in the electoral crimes section of the Department of Justice’s public integrity section to skip the stages of the procedure for investigating “substantial” allegations of electoral fraud.

“We urge you to reverse it,” wrote prosecutors, who have been tasked with enforcing federal voting laws across the country on election day, in bold type of Barr’s memo.

“It was developed and announced without consulting non-partisan career professionals in the field and in the Ministry. Finally, the timing of the memorandum’s publication pushes career prosecutors into partisan politics,” the prosecutors wrote.

Barr’s memo served as a catalyst for the resignation of Richard Pilger, the head of the electoral crimes section. Pilger spoke out against Barr’s memo in a resignation letter he passed on to his colleagues.

The letter was co-signed by 16 deputy lawyers in the United States from 15 of the 44 jurisdictions chosen by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to monitor the November 3 general election. U.S. deputy attorneys said in the letter that in the districts they were monitoring, they found no evidence of significant voting irregularities.

Federal prosecutors in the letter covered the jurisdictions of the districts of eastern and southern New York, eastern Kentucky, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, northern California, southern l Ohio, southern Iowa, western Pennsylvania, western North Carolina, western Arkansas, and the Virgin Islands. and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as two prosecutors from Oregon.

“In the jurisdictions where we act as WD, in the 2020 election cycle, there is no evidence of ‘substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities’ that ” could potentially have an impact on the outcome of a federal election, “to use the terms of the Memorandum,” according to the letter.

Kerri Kupec, spokesperson for the Department of Justice, declined to comment on the letter from prosecutors.

Instead, Kupec referred to the last paragraph of Barr’s memo, which includes: “ Nothing here should be taken as an indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities affected the result. of any election. Rather, I give this authority and guidance to stress the need to address allegations of voting irregularities in a timely and appropriate manner so that all the American people, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, can have full confidence in the our election results. “

CNN’s Evan Perez contributed to this report.

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