In an interview, the former attorney general rejected a pro-Trump former U.S. attorney’s allegation that the Justice Department stifled vote-tampering investigations.
www.politico.com
excerpts:
In an interview with POLITICO, Barr — who became a favored punching bag for Trump after the 2020 election — denied ever telling McSwain or others not to pursue fraud allegations related to the vote.
“It’s written to make it seem like I gave him a directive,” Barr said. “I never told him not to investigate anything.”
Barr said he spoke to McSwain Monday after hearing about the letter and that Trump was pressuring the former prosecutor to claim that Barr had bottled up election fraud probes last year. Barr said the former prosecutor indicated he was trying to assuage Trump’s concerns without claiming that actual fraud went unchallenged.
“It’s very cutely written,” the former AG said of McSwain’s letter. “He said he was going to try to thread the needle. … He said to me he didn’t want to say anything that would advance the president’s stolen election narrative, but by the same token he was going to try to thread the needle by saying some things that were literally, technically accurate.”
Barr said he warned McSwain against such an approach.
“I said, ‘But you’re trying to give the impression these things were not adequately or fully investigated,’” the former AG said.
Barr noted that six days after the election, he issued a written directive to all U.S. attorneys authorizing them to pursue ballot fraud and vote tabulation irregularities. The attorney general took heat at the time over the order, with liberals complaining that he was bowing to bizarre and nonsensical claims by Trump about voter fraud.
At least one senior prosecutor, the longtime head of the election-crimes branch at Justice Department headquarters, stepped down in protest over the directive.
A new book, “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency” by Michael Wolff, claims that Trump directly called several U.S. attorneys following the election to press them to chase after fraud allegations. Among them was McSwain, according to Wolff.
One former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said McSwain’s office did aggressively investigate several election-related fraud claims and was given no “stand-down” order from Washington.
Barr said McSwain has claimed the instruction to hand off the case to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro came from Richard Donoghue, who was the principal associate deputy attorney general during that period, a source said. McSwain suggests Shapiro couldn’t be trusted because of his comments about Trump. Shapiro also appears to be the leading Democratic candidate for governor, making him a potential opponent for McSwain in the general election.
Donoghue responded to McSwain’s letter with a statement defending the Justice Department’s handling of election-related cases
“Which authority or authorities reviewed a particular allegation turned largely on the nature of the allegation itself,” Donoghue said, noting the overlapping jurisdiction. “In some instances, state and federal authorities referred matters to one another.”
“While I was made aware of allegations relating to conduct in Delaware County, I did not preclude DOJ personnel in Pennsylvania from investigating allegations of criminal misconduct relating to the 2020 elections or direct that any such allegations be handled exclusively by state authorities,” Donoghue added.
Barr said he wasn’t involved in detailed discussions with McSwain about the Delaware County case, but agreed with the general approach Donoghue outlined.
“My position in all of these was they should not get into a fight with the state people. If they’re investigating, they should look over their shoulder, they should talk to witnesses. Don’t get into fights with them,” the attorney general said. “The county was vehement that this was all BS.”
/thread
www.inquirer.com
