Trump Encourages Voter Fraud; Barr Backs Him Up

(Trump arriving at Wilmington International Airport in Wilmington, North Carolina, on September 2, 2020 for a campaign event. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP, via Getty Images.)

President Donald Trump made a campaign visit to Wilmington, North Carolina, yesterday, where he encouraged residents of the state to vote twice for him. While speaking to supporters upon arrival at Wilmington International Airport, Trump suggested that people in North Carolina should vote twice for him in the November election, once by mail and once in person.

Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule

Here is Trump in Wilmington, NC, yesterday, encouraging his voters to vote twice because he is no doubt willing to test the system at this point to see how many double votes he can push through with tainted election officials.

Voting twice is illegal under both North Carolina and federal law. In North Carolina, it is also illegal “to induce” someone else to fraudulently cast a ballot. North Carolina’s voting system is set up to make it impossible for a person to vote twice, because once the mail-in ballot is received, the voter’s in-person ballot at the polls would be rejected. This is how every properly functioning state-wide election system operates, and it’s now clear Trump is trying to test the system in a purple state that has the potential of causing him problems in the upcoming November election.

While Trump stood on a tarmac in Wilmington to encourage his voters to vote twice, confident in the fact that he will suffer no criminal repercussions while in office, his attorney general was dispatched to push several false narratives including vote-by-mail fraud.

William Barr appeared on CNN yesterday to launch another round of attacks on the concept of voter fraud by mail in the United States, a false argument that has been debunked by multiple studies. Barr claimed that fraud in the vote-by-mail process has yielded “substantial fraud and coercion,” which is an ongoing unsubstantiated claim from the Trump administration.

Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule

Barr claims mail in voting is backed up by studies that say it is "open with fraud and coercion." This is untrue-most reliable studies show the exact opposite. Most states who have conducted vote-by-mail for years employ safeguards to protect from this.

This response from Barr is based on the fact that more states intend to rely more heavily on mail-in voting this fall because of the pandemic. The five states that relied on mail-in ballots even before the coronavirus pandemic — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah — have confirmed putting the necessary safeguards in place to ensure against fraud and to prevent hostile foreign actors from altering the vote.

More states intend to utilize mail-in voting this fall due to the pandemic, and this method of voting favors Biden by 2 to 1. In his interview, Barr cited a report from more than a decade ago from a commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker that said vote-by-mail was vulnerable to fraud.

But, Barr omitted the conclusory portion of the finding by the commission that was made public in a statement in May, that confirmed it had found little evidence of fraud in states that had utilized sufficient safeguards. Barr also said he was basing on “logic” his concern that a hostile foreign actor could produce bogus ballots for the election, despite senior US officials confirming to reporters last week that they had no intelligence to suggest that was happening.

Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule

Watch as AG Bill Barr tries to sell that China is the country that is most aggressively trying to interfere in the 2020 election, even though we have intel from a GOP led Senate investigation that says Russia is still heavily invested in Trump.

When asked the question of whether Russia, China or Iran, has been most assertive in interfering in the election, Barr replied: “I believe it’s China.” This assessment does not add up, based on the intelligence recently made public. A formal statement was made last month by Counterintelligence Chief William Evanina that directly implicated Russia with regard to 2020 election interference.

Evanina revealed that Russia is actively working to “denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’ in America,” which is primarily a reference to the Biden campaign. The report describes China’s activities as much more inchoate. China prefers that Trump not win the election due to his unpredictability, but this is hardly comparable to Russia’s ongoing direct attempts help Trump assume and maintain power by interfering in US elections.

The attorney general was asked about Trump’s statement in North Carolina, and whether or not he was encouraging people in that state to vote twice. Barr claimed he didn’t know what the president meant, and then went on to say Trump was intending to point out weaknesses in election security. When he was asked directly to confirm that voting twice was illegal, the US Attorney General claimed he didn’t know the law in '“that particular state” despite it being illegal at the federal level.

Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule

Here is the Attorney General of the United States refusing to confirm that voting twice is a federal and state crime. Barr: "I don't know what the law in the particular state says." He knows. He also knows it's a federal crime, which is his jurisdiction.

Make no mistake, this is a perfectly timed, strategic attack on the concept of a free election in the United States of America made by a sitting president and his attorney general. Trump is dispatched to a campaign event where he encourages his supporters to vote twice for him because, why not — maybe he can get some double votes through and he won’t be held criminally accountable for it.

Meanwhile, the attorney general appeared on a cable news program, with a more liberal and independent audience, to sell Trump’s false vote-by-mail notions under the facade of legal authority. But, by refusing to acknowledge the very obvious laws in place, and by giving only partial and therefore misleading explanations of historical contexts, Barr has made a point to purposely mislead the voter in favor of Trump.

What began as an interview addressing the Trump administration’s response to Civil Rights issues, has suddenly devolved into the US Attorney General acting on behalf of the Trump Campaign by distracting the American public from Russia and refusing to acknowledge the tenants of basic election fraud. This was just another stop yesterday for the Trump Campaign, with their very own attorney general in tow, willing to pummel his reputation yet again to help lend legal legitimacy to Trump’s outrageous claims — reminding us all that the call is coming from inside the house.

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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.

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