Remember President Trump’s claim that there was massive voter fraud in the election? The controversy goes back to a Nov. 27 tweet in which then-President-elect Trump said, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” The claim resurfaced in January as Trump claimed that 3-5 million people had voted illegally and promised a “major investigation” into the fraud.
That was about a week ago. How’s the investigation been going since then? About as well as O.J. Simpson’s search for the real killer.
CNN reports that the investigation seems to have faded away with little fanfare. Citing an official in the Trump Administration, the report says that the investigation is not dead, but is no longer a top priority.
A week ago, it seemed an Executive Order detailing the investigation was imminent, now the source says, “I think there will be something signed, but I don’t think it will be now.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Voter fraud of 3-5 million votes would represent about three percent of votes cast in the election. If there is evidence that fraud on such a massive scale occurred, it should be a high priority for the Justice Department. Such fraud, if it existed, would undermine the integrity of the entire election process.
In reality, state elections officials, many of them Republican, say that there is no evidence of fraud on the scale that Trump claimed. The author of Pew study on voter fraud cited by Trump, tweeted, “As I’ve noted before, voting integrity better [was] in this election than ever before. Zero evidence of fraud.”
The Trump Administration’s quiet abandonment of the voter fraud investigation fits his pattern of making outlandish claims and then quietly abandoning them. It is a pattern that we will probably see more of over the next four years.
Originally published on The Resurgent
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