President Trump should heed Attorney General William Barr’s announcement that the Justice Department has not found enough evidence of vote fraud to change the presidential election result.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press. Specifically addressing the wild claims that Trump’s opponents used a ballot-counting software to alter millions of votes, Barr added: “The [Department of Homeland Security] and [Department of Justice] have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.”
To be clear, Barr was not shy about looking for fraud. Last month, he issued a controversial but entirely appropriate directive to U.S. attorneys nationwide to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. That was more than three weeks ago. What he now says is that while he cannot completely rule out the legitimacy of civil claims that significant irregularities occurred, the accusations of criminal conduct of a scale that would change the election “have been run down … [and] followed up on.” And they were found lacking.
This does not mean there is no merit to some claims of fraud or major human error. It means only that the evidence of criminal wrongdoing, if any, is too slender to put Trump over the top. The Justice Department may prosecute particular instances of fraud, if any, later, but Trump’s only recourse for staying in office will remain in civil courts.
Barr is, of course, seen as a very Trump-friendly Cabinet member. For good reason, Barr believes that vote fraud is a very real problem and that widespread mail-in balloting makes such fraud or widespread error more likely. For both of those reasons, Barr’s new statement, even hedged as it is, should help tamp down some of the feverish conspiracy theories being pushed by pro-Trump bitter-enders.
More importantly, it should (but likely won’t) convince Trump to moderate his language about the election. If even his loyal lieutenant, Barr, whose political worldview is quite similar to Trump’s, says the evidence for the big conspiracy theories is inadequate, Trump should stop stoking the flames in ways that radicalize his supporters. Already, one of the “outside” lawyers most prominent in carrying the pro-Trump election fraud legal fight, Lin Wood, is predicting “civil war” and calling on Trump to institute “martial law.”
This is dangerously destabilizing. Trump must put an end to this right now. He has a responsibility to the public to keep an inferno from erupting. Even if he wants to pursue further claims in court, he should do so without extravagant public claims, demagogic tweets, or inflammatory rhetoric.
To be clear, some claims of human error or nefarious action seem more legitimate than not. They should be investigated and never allowed to occur again. Still, simple arithmetic, plus a whole string of court defeats for the Trump team, indicates that these problems are almost certainly not voluminous enough to provide legal grounds to swing the election back to Trump.
In 1960, Richard Nixon had good reason to believe far more obvious and potentially decisive claims of voter fraud on behalf of presidential opponent John F. Kennedy than the ones Trump claims occurred this year. Yet, for the good of the country’s stability, Nixon declined to pursue them.
Now that Trump does not even have his attorney general supporting him, Trump should follow Nixon’s lead. While still insisting that meritorious allegations of anomalies be investigated, Trump should concede the election and honor the tradition of a peaceful, stable transfer of presidential authority.
