Barrage of Republican lawsuits
Investigate, Barr tells prosecutors
WASHINGTON/WILMINGTON: President Donald Trump will push ahead today with legal challenges to the results of last week’s election after US Attorneygeneral William Barr told federal prosecutors to look into any ‘‘substantial’’ allegations of voting irregularities.
Barr’s directive to prosecutors prompted the top lawyer overseeing voter fraud investigations to resign in protest.
It came after days of attacks on the integrity of the election by Trump and Republican allies, who have alleged widespread voter fraud, without providing evidence.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent 30 observers to the US to monitor the election process, saw no evidence of systematic irregularities, representative Katya Andrusz said.
Trump has not conceded the election to Democrat Joe Biden, who on Sunday secured more than the 270 votes in the Electoral College needed to win the presidency.
The Trump campaign has filed several lawsuits claiming the election results were flawed. Judges have tossed out lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia, and experts say Trump’s legal efforts have little chance of changing the election result.
Barr told prosecutors yesterday that ‘‘fanciful or farfetched claims’’ should not be a basis for investigation and his letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.
He said he was authorising prosecutors to ‘‘pursue substantial allegations’’ of irregularities of voting and counting ballots.
Richard Pilger, who for years has served as director of the Election Crimes Branch, announced in an internal email he was resigning after he read ‘‘the new policy and its ramifications’’.
Biden’s campaign said Barr was fuelling Trump’s farfetched allegations of fraud.
‘‘Those are the very kind of claims that the president and his lawyers are making unsuccessfully every day, as their lawsuits are laughed out of one court after another,’’ Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden. said
Earlier yesterday, Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit to block Pennsylvania officials from certifying Biden’s victory in the state.
It claimed the state’s mailin voting system violated the US Constitution by creating ‘‘an illegal twotiered voting system’’ whereby voting in person was subject to more oversight than voting by mail.
It was filed against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections in Democraticleaning counties that include Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the latest lawsuit in Pennsylvania was unlikely to succeed and ‘‘reads like a rehash of many of the arguments the Trump legal team has made in and outside the courtroom.’’
Biden, who has begun work on his transition to the White House, will give a speech today defending the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare, as the US Supreme Court hears arguments on a lawsuit backed by the Trump Administration to invalidate it.
Trump and Republicans have repeatedly tried to do away with the 2010 law passed under President Barack Obama. — Reuters