Head of DOJ election crimes unit RESIGNS in protest after Bill Barr voter fraud memo

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Donald Trump Jr has accused the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud of being a member of the ‘Deep State’, after the official dramatically quit on Monday night.

Richard Pilger resigned after Attorney General William Barr authorized federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue ‘substantial allegations’ of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election is certified, despite little evidence of fraud. 

Pilger, director of the Election Crimes Branch of the Department of Justice since 2010, stepped down within hours of Barr’s announcement, in an email he sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times.

And President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr, was quick to criticize Pilger.

He wrote: ‘Wait. Seriously? Isn’t this the guy who was involved with the IRS and Lois Lerner in targeting conservatives and the Tea Party? Maybe that’s why he hasn’t done s**t at DOJ. #deepstate’ 

Trump Jr’s tweet refers to a scandal known as the ‘IRS targeting controversy’, when the department began targeting new tax-exempt groups following a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed them to funnel money into politics.

An investigation into the scandal revealed that groups with ‘Tea Party’ and associated terms in their names had been put on an IRS list that singled them out for extra scrutiny, leading to accusations of bias.

Lois Lerner, then head of the tax-exempt division at the IRS, had spoken with Richard Pilger over email in 2010, during his first year as head of the election crimes branch of the DoJ.

In the exchange – which came shortly before the midterm elections – they spoke about the possibility of prosecuting groups for abusing their tax-exempt status. 

The pair also met around the same time – a meeting was later scrutinized in Congress. Lerner eventually pleaded the Fifth. 

Pilger submitted his resignation Monday evening shortly after his boss, Barr, announced the unprecedented federal support for the election investigations – a move which would delight Donald Trump. 

In his resignation email, Pilger said Barr’s memo was ‘an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference-Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.’ 

He said his resignation was ‘in accord with the best tradition of the John C. Keeney Award for Exceptional Integrity and Professionalism (my most cherished Departmental recognition).’ 

Barr’s memo angered legal experts, who pointed out that any issues around voting are handled at the state level and should not be considered a federal matter. 

Several analysts said that Barr was at serious risk of dragging the Department of Justice into a highly partisan electoral war, waged through the courts. 

Pilger, whose 25-year career has been devoted to election crimes and public corruption, told his colleagues in the email on Monday evening that he was quitting, in a sign of how worried many within the legal community are at Barr’s unprecedented behavior. 

Barr’s action comes days after Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump and raises the prospect that Trump will use the Justice Department to try to challenge the outcome. 

It gives prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election is formally certified.

In his memo, Barr argues that the existing ‘passive and delayed enforcement approach’ could undermine the vote.

He says that the precedent should be ignored, and investigations conducted rigorously before the certification of votes on December 8. 

‘In instances where they are consulted, the ECB’s (Election Crimes Branch) general practice has been to counsel that overt investigative steps ordinarily should not be taken until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified and all recounts and election contests concluded,’ he wrote.

‘Such a passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations in which election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified.’

A Justice Department official told the New York Times that Barr had authorized scrutiny of allegations about ineligible voters in Nevada and backdated mail-in ballots Pennsylvania. 

Trump has not conceded the election and is instead claiming without evidence that there has been a widespread, multi-state conspiracy by Democrats to skew the vote tally in Biden’s favor.

Biden holds a sizable lead in multiple battleground states and there has been no indication of enough improperly counted or illegally cast votes that would shift the outcome. 

Election officials from both political parties have publicly stated the election went well, though there have been minor issues that are typical in elections, including voting machines breaking and ballots that were miscast and lost. 

In the memo to U.S. attorneys, obtained by The Associated Press, Barr wrote that investigations ‘may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.’

States have until December 8 to resolve election disputes, including recounts and court contests over the results. 

Members of the Electoral College meet on December 14 to finalize the outcome.

Pilger’s resignation was taken as a very worrying sign from people who had worked alongside him.

Steve Dettelback, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said he had first crossed paths with Pilger 30 years ago and described him as ‘a great prosecutor’.

‘Shame on the political “leadership” at DOJ,’ he said.

Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said: ‘Richard Pilger is a respected apolitical attorney who has been a federal corruption prosecutor for decades (including when I was one years ago). 

‘His resigning in protest makes clear to me that something very wrong indeed is happening here.’

Another former colleague, former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, added: ‘I also worked with Richard Pilger at Public Integrity. He is someone with an outstanding reputation. 

‘If he feels the need to step down, something bad is happening.’

Their concern was echoed by political figures.

Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Barr was ‘the president’s puppet’ and was deliberately undermining the election.

Chris Murphy, Senator for Connecticut, said it was ‘sad’ how many public servants were forced out.

Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for the Southern District of New York – until he was fired by Trump – said he expected the resignation of Pilger would lead to a Senate inquiry.

‘Who will be the first Senator to call for an Inspector General investigation over the AG Barr memo that just prompted the head of the Election Crimes Branch at DOJ to step down?’ he wondered. 

Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Law&Crime Network that the ‘Justice Department is not Trump’s toy – and Barr should not act like the president’s binky.’

He added: ‘Just when we thought that the most politically compliant Attorney General in modern times would go quietly into the night, Bill Barr rises from his bunker and shocks us again.’

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss told Law&Crime: ‘This is getting rather dangerously close to the line of unlawful political interference by the Justice Department.’

He pointed out the voting irregularities were usually resolved at the state level.

‘The federal government has very little role in the conduct of our elections, and there is no indication that the various quixotic lawsuits being filed in the states can’t resolve this issue just fine without intervention by DOJ,’ Moss said. 

‘Hopefully this is simply more ‘election theater’ by AG Barr to assuage the president’s fragile ego than anything else.’ 

Biden is ahead by 43,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 148,000 votes in Michigan, 34,000 votes in Nevada and 13,000 votes in Arizona, with ballots still being counted. 

Even if all of Trump’s current challenges are successful, experts believe they are unlikely to overcome those margins. The campaign has promised more challenges to come.

The Trump campaign has said it will order a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden is up by 20,000 votes, and is likely in Georgia, where he is currently up by 10,000, but they are unlikely to overturn those results. The Trump camp is furiously raising money it says will go to the effort. 

The Trump campaign has yet to produce any evidence to back its claims of widespread fraud.  

Trump campaign unveils new lawsuit in bid to disqualify hundreds of thousands of votes in Pennsylvania but with NO new evidence of fraud – after chaotic press conference with Kayleigh McEnany 

President Donald Trump‘s campaign along with White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany staged a chaotic press conference Monday where they claimed the election is ‘not over’ and attacked ‘partisan’ election officials but offered no new evidence of the fraud they allege.

The crowded, heated affair was just latest by Trump forces alleging fraud that ended in scraps with the media – including one in Philadelphia where the first witnesses trotted out by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani turned out to be a convicted child sex offender. 

The campaign held the event to make its claims while lawyers filed a 105-page, double-spaced lawsuit in Pennsylvania court making its case to throw out more than 600,000 votes.

Plaintiffs were the campaign, former Pennsylvania state Rep. Lawrence Roberts, who is a 78-year old former cosmetologist, and Lancaster County voter David John Henry. 

At Monday’s presser, it was McEnany, who was there on personal time from her job as a taxpayer-funded employee, as well as Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel laying out the allegations, and taking just a few questions.

‘What we have seen across the country is Democrat officials systematically trying to do an end run around the Constitution to tip the scales of the election in their favor,’ said McEnany, who also lectured reporters, telling them to ask questions of election officials when they questioned her.    

‘Isn’t the president just being a sore loser?’ asked a reporter after McEnany abruptly ended the event, held at RNC headquarters in Washington.   

‘Our poll watchers were put behind barricades in a massive room. They were many feet from the counting process. And in fact when you look at all the tables, many hundreds of feet in fact from the tables in the back. They were completely in the dark,’ she said.  

‘What are Pennsylvania Democrats hiding?’ she asked.

Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan said Trump allies had filed suit in Pennsylvania, the site of Giuliani’s weekend presser where the first witness brought out by Giuliani was revealed to have served jail time for exposing himself to two girls, ages 7 and 11.

‘The election is not over,’ Morgan said. 

McDaniel complained that observers were ‘intimidated and pushed from the process.’

But the group declined to provide evidence when reporters asked for it. 

Asked if she knew votes were fraudulently cast, McEnany responded: ‘What we are asking for here is patience … We are hearing these reports. We are seeing them come in. We are vetting them.’

McDaniel claimed they had a whistleblower who was an election worker told to back-date ballots.

She rejected a question about a ‘conspiracy’ that somehow allowed House Republicans to prevail while Trump lost key battlegrounds. 

‘There’s no conspiracy there,’ she responded.

‘There were 682,479 ballots counted in Philadelphia, in Allegheny County, that there were no poll watchers allowed to watch. 

‘It is the job of the media to ask the question why. All we are asking for is truth, transparency and sunlight here. That is all we are asking for, and sadly we are asking the questions many of you should,’ she lectured.

Philadelphia is not in Allegheny County. 

Trump’s team has not provided evidence that there were no poll watchers, claiming at other times that observers who were present didn’t have a good enough view or access. Plaintiffs acknowledged that in a Pennsylvania court dispute. Media members who were present inside counting facilities identified and observed poll watchers, which are required by law.

The officials took just two questions before abruptly ending the event.  

The backdrop for the press conference was President Trump’s insistence that he ‘won’ the election and would prevail in battlegrounds TV networks have already called for President-elect Joe Biden.

‘Wisconsin is looking very good. Needs a little time statutorily. Will happen soon!’ Trump tweeted Monday. Biden leads there by more than 20,000 votes. He leads by more than 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

Foreign leaders have already begun calling Biden to congratulate him. Former Republican President George W. Bush also congratulated Biden and called him president elect, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose wife serves in Trump’s cabinet, is calling for the legal process to play itself out. 

According to the lawsuit, which names the Pennsylvania secretary of state an county election boards, ‘Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by the political parties and candidates.’

But the suit seems to confirm there were in fact observers present. It states that  ‘Allegheny and Pennsylvania counties conducted the canvassing and tabulation in convention center rooms and placed observers far away from the action.’

It charges that Democratic-run counties engaged in pre-canvassing activities ‘by reviewing received mail-in ballots for deficiencies, such as lacking the inner secrecy envelope or lacking a signature of the elector on the outer declaration envelope.’

Under state law litigated before the election, mail-in votes had to be placed inside a special security sleeve and then placed inside a second envelope to be counted. 

Election officials are sometimes allowed to help voters ‘cure’ their ballots by contacting them to avoid their vote being trashed.