No conspicuous motions have been made by officials to investigate claims brought by the Trump camp
The US Department of Justice has been silent on the claims of widespread voter fraud brought by the camp of President Donald Trump over the results of the recent US election.
According to the Washington Post, the department has not made conspicuous motions to investigate the claims even though earlier this month, Attorney-General William Barr authorised federal prosecutors to investigate voter fraud allegations before election results were certified.
Ex-DoJ voting rights official and current Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt told the Washington Post that the department’s silence indicated “a tiny sliver of normalcy, and frankly a positive sign that we are on our way back to a better place.”
“In a way, that’s hard to say because it feels like lowering the bar to below the floor, to say we should all be pretty pleased that the institution of law enforcement for the United States didn’t go either full-on partisan talking-point machine or full-on conspiracy theorist. In normal times, that wouldn’t be something to celebrate, that would just be a given…The Justice Department also hasn’t come out and said the world is round, because they don’t need to,” Levitt said.
A DoJ official said that the mere act of announcing an investigation had the potential to tarnish the credibility of the election. Officials also said that they did not want to be involved in probes that were lacking in reasonable basis of suspicion, with some noting that even Barr’s memo to relax restrictions on prosecutors made exceptions only for the investigation of anomalies that could alter the election results.
University of California at Irvine law professor Richard Hasen told the Washington Post that given Barr’s public disapproval of mail-in voting, “if there had been anything he could have hung his hat on after the election, he would have done so.”
“The fact that no one has come forward with anything as far as we know, that’s a pretty good indication this has been a pretty clean election,” Hasen said.
The Washington Post reported that according to those familiar with the matter, the department has initiated some quiet investigations into a few allegations; however, officials have not uncovered significant evidence of wrongdoing.
“The Justice Department is a very powerful battleship, but there are limits to its jurisdiction, and in an awful lot of elections, the contested ground is on land or in the air, where a battleship doesn’t do you a lot of good,” Levitt said.
