WASHINGTON--U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in last month's election, even as President Donald Trump kept up his flailing legal efforts to reverse his defeat.
"To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Barr, a Trump appointee widely seen as loyal to the Republican president, told the Associated Press.
Barr told federal prosecutors last month to pursue investigations into credible allegations of election fraud, but warned them to avoid probes into "fanciful or far-fetched claims."
Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the Nov. 3 election by 306 to 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that chooses the president - the same margin that Trump declared a "landslide" when he won four years ago - as well as by more than 6.2 million ballots in the popular vote. Despite that, Trump has continued to claim loudly and without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud. Those claims that have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials.
The Trump campaign's legal team responded to Barr's comments by saying the Justice Department did not do enough to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
Trump's campaign has had no success advancing election-fraud claims in court, but his continued complaints appear to have yielded political benefit as polls show a large percentage of Republicans now believe the election was not conducted fairly. A top election official in Georgia implored Trump to stop his baseless claims, saying they were leading to threats and potential acts of violence against him and other authorities.
"Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed," said Gabriel Sterling, manager for the state's voting systems. "It has all gone too far. ... It has to stop."
In Wisconsin, Trump's campaign asked the state's top court to consider throwing out 221,000 absentee ballots that allegedly lacked information. Biden won that battleground state by about 20,000 votes.
