Republicans want to spend your money to investigate baseless voter fraud lies

A group of 27 House Republicans have signed on to a letter urging Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate “irregularities in the 2020 election” — a baseless claim to help excuse Donald Trump’s “landslide” loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

“The American people deserve a definitive resolution to the uncertainty hovering over the outcome of our election, but legitimate questions of voter fraud remain unanswered,” reads a letter sent by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-LA) and signed by 26 others from the House GOP caucus.

However, Barr already said there was no fraud.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month.

It was a rare moment where Barr refused to back up Trump’s conspiracy theories and lies. Barr has previously propped up Trump’s baseless attacks on being spied on by former President Barack Obama, and even tried to sow doubt in the safety of absentee ballots as Trump railed against them all year, among other instances.

Ultimately, a special counsel isn’t likely to find any “fraud” after other investigations have failed to find any — but it would cost taxpayers money for Congress to devote staff time and resources to draw the same conclusion.

Already, courts across the country have slammed Trump and his allies for making baseless voter fraud claims with no evidence.

“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by Trump, wrote in a decision throwing out one of the Trump campaign’s many lawsuits.

In fact, Trump’s attempt to steal the election through the judicial system has failed, as the final vote tallies have been certified in every state and the “Safe Harbor” deadline for states to resolve legal challenges to the results has passed.

Yet Trump is still raging about his loss, lying about fraud, and demanding the results be overturned.

Precious few Republicans are calling Trump out on his effort to undermine the fundamental democratic principle of free and fair elections. In fact, just 25 out of 249 Republicans in the House and Senate surveyed by the Washington Post would even acknowledge the reality that Biden is president-elect.

Instead, like these more than two dozen House Republicans, GOP lawmakers are backing up Trump’s accusations of fraud.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) even offered to argue a case seeking to toss out millions of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania — an offer that will never come to fruition because the Supreme Court refused to hear the suit.

And more trouble for voting rights advocates is that, in states like Georgia, Republicans are using the false allegations of fraud to make voting harder — ultimately attempting to suppress the vote over baseless lies.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.