Tag: Trump has to cheat to win re-election

‘This is disturbing’: DOJ claims armed feds are allowed to inspect state vote-counting locations

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As ongoing vote tabulation in several key battleground states continues to slowly narrow President Donald Trump’s path to reelection, the New York Times reported late Wednesday that the Justice Department has told federal prosecutors that U.S. law permits armed federal agents to enter ballot-counting locations to investigate alleged “fraud,” heightening fears of possible intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.

News of the Justice Department’s early Wednesday email came after Trump spent much of that day lying about vote-counting procedures and peddling baseless claims of suspicious activity as he watched his slim leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania vanish.

The Times noted that the Justice Department’s email, authored by Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, “created the specter of the federal government intimidating local election officials or otherwise intervening in vote tallying amid calls by President Trump to end the tabulating in states where he was trailing in the presidential race.” Continue reading.

Justice Dept. Eases Election Fraud Inquiry Constraints as Trump Promotes False Narrative

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The move comes as President Trump promotes a false narrative of widespread voter fraud ahead of the election.

For decades, federal prosecutors have been told not to mount election fraud investigations in the final months before an election for fear they could depress voter turnout or erode confidence in the results. Now, the Justice Department has lifted that prohibition weeks before the presidential election.

The move comes as President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have promoted a false narrative that voter fraud is rampant, potentially undermining Americans’ faith in the election.

A Justice Department lawyer in Washington said in a memo to prosecutors on Friday that they could investigate suspicions of election fraud before votes are tabulated. That reversed a decades-long policy that largely forbade aggressively conducting such inquiries during campaigns to keep their existence from becoming public and possibly “chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities” or “interjecting the investigation itself as an issue” for voters. Continue reading.