Former US Attorney Claims AG Barr Pressured Him Not to Investigate Voter Fraud
After former Attorney General William Barr said there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump’s chances of overturning election results were effectively killed.
Many felt that if Trump’s own AG was unable to support his claims of election fraud, the accusations must not have much merit.
However, Trump released a letter Monday he said proves Barr discouraged certain individuals from investigating possible voter fraud connected to the election.
The letter was dated June 9, 2021, and was sent by William McSwain, the U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 2018 until January 2021. McSwain, who plans to run for governor in Pennsylvania in 2022, claimed Barr told him to steer clear of election fraud claim investigations to the extent it was possible.
“U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was precluded from investigating election fraud allegations. Outrageous!” Trump said in a statement accompanying the letter.
HUGE!
President Trump releases letter showing how Bill Barr pressured the US Attorney in PA NOT to investigate Voter Fraud, and instead hand it over to the DEMOCRAT anti-Trump Attorney General Josh Shaprio https://t.co/pIVUBg1Oyd pic.twitter.com/Akkgs6KXIX
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) July 12, 2021
“President Trump, you were right to be upset about the way the Democrats ran the 2020 election in Pennsylvania – it was a partisan disgrace,” McSwain wrote in the letter.
McSwain went on to allege Barr told him “not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.”
McSwain resides in Pennsylvania, where the state attorney general is a Democrat named Josh Shapiro. On Oct. 31, 2020, Shapiro tweeted Trump would not win the election after all the votes were counted.
If all the votes are added up in PA, Trump is going to lose. That’s why he’s working overtime to subtract as many votes as possible from this process.
For the record, he’s 0-6 against us in court. We’ve protected voting rights. Now, ignore the noise—vote!https://t.co/mN8t6TDud7
— Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) October 31, 2020
Anyone who is familiar with election timelines should realize Oct. 31, 2020, was three days before the 2020 presidential election. Yet at that time, Shapiro was already confident Trump would lose.
That would seem to prove Shapiro was against Trump from the beginning, as almost any Democrat is. But for some reason, Barr reportedly thought Shapiro could be trusted to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
“I was also given a directive to pass along serious allegations to the State Attorney General for investigation — the same State Attorney General who had already declared that you could not win,” McSwain wrote in the letter.
According to the accusations, Barr not only dismissed credible claims of voter fraud, but also trusted an outspoken Democrat and critic of Trump to handle any potential allegations. That is hardly a responsible investigation into the possibility of voter fraud.
If Barr had publicly supported investigations into questions surrounding the election, the idea would have almost certainly gained more traction.
Instead, he allegedly pressured attorneys not to investigate these claims and then declared widespread voter fraud never occurred.
After Trump released the letter, McSwain tweeted he was “pleased” it was shared “because I believe in transparency.”
This piece is just silly. The President is not “turning up the heat” on me. Just the opposite: I was pleased that he shared my letter — because I believe in transparency. The more people who know the facts, the better.https://t.co/T4X6X2EG8k
— Bill McSwain (@McSwainPA) July 13, 2021
Barr on Tuesday denied McSwain’s allegations.
“Any suggestion that McSwain was told to stand down from investigating allegations of election fraud is false. It’s just false,” Barr said, according to The Washington Post. He added the assertions “appeared to have been made to mollify President Trump to gain his support for McSwain’s planned run for governor.”
“It’s written to make it seem like I gave [McSwain] a directive,” Barr told Politico. “I never told him not to investigate anything.”
“It’s very cutely written,” the former attorney general said of the letter, adding he spoke to McSwain Monday after its release.
“[McSwain] 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.”
“I said, ‘But you’re trying to give the impression these things were not adequately or fully investigated,’” Barr said.
A source told Politico McSwain’s claim he was told to hand off investigations to the Pennsylvania attorney general referred to a single complaint.
Trump’s release of the letter comes on the heels of a review in Georgia finding nearly 35,000 votes in the 2020 election may have been cast illegally.
Georgia has a law requiring citizens to vote in the county where they reside unless they move during the 30 days prior to the election, The Federalist reported. Despite that, almost 35,000 Georgians allegedly moved to a new county but voted in their previous one.
Trump supporters who still have lingering doubts about the accuracy of the 2020 election results are dismissed as outlandish, but new evidence seemingly bolstering their argument emerges almost daily.
Regardless of the accuracy of the results, though, there is no doubt Joe Biden was aided by both politicians and establishment media members who protected him at every turn.
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