Sixteen assistant U.S. attorneys, who were specially assigned to monitor malfeasance in the 2020 election, have urged Attorney General William P. Barr to rescind his recent memorandum allowing investigators to publicly pursue allegations of “vote tabulation irregularities” after they said they had not seen evidence of any substantial anomalies.
According to The Washington Post, the 16 assistant U.S. attorneys told Barr that the release of his Monday memorandum — which will change the long-standing Justice Department policy about the steps prosecutors could take before election results are certified will “thrusts career prosecutors into partisan politics.”
The prosecutors wrote that in the places where they served as district election officers, taking in reports of possible election-related crimes, they found no evidence of the kind of fraud that Barr’s memo has specifically highlighted.
Barr’s memo authorized the prosecutors “to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases,” with emphasis on those particular jurisdictions where the outcome of an election could be affected.
The assistant U.S. attorneys wrote, “The policy change was not based in fact.”
The Washington Post reports that current and former Justice Department officials have come forward in recent days, relaying that they were stunned and frustrated by Barr’s election-related directive. Many of them worried Barr was attempting to aid Trump’s effort to cast doubt on his election defeat.
