William Barr says there is no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election

The Justice Department hasn’t found evidence to support allegations of widespread fraud that could have changed the result of last month’s presidential election, Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press published Tuesday.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.

Barr, who prior to the election echoed President Donald Trump’s claims that mail-in voting wasn’t secure, said both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have looked into claims of fraud and come up empty.

“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” Barr said. “And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.”

The comments from Barr, who has been steadfast in his support of Trump during his tenure, represent the latest official rebuke of the President’s claims of widespread fraud. They come several weeks after a former cybersecurity official also publicly rebuffed Trump’s claims, leading the President to unceremoniously fire him from his post in the administration.

Two attorneys working for Trump swiftly rejected Barr’s assessment on Tuesday, repeating their claim that they have “ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states,” which they say the attorney general isn’t privy to.

“With the greatest respect to the attorney general, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,” attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement.

Barr had previously pushed similar claims to the ones Trump has repeatedly made, including in September, when he made a number of false and misleading claims to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview in which he condemned states using mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

“People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology — which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion — is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire,” Barr said at the time.

This story is breaking and will be updated.