WILMINGTON: US Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in last month’s election, even as President Donald Trump kept up his flailing legal efforts to reverse his electoral defeat.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr, a Trump appointee widely seen as loyal to the Republican president, told the Associated Press.
Barr told federal prosecutors last month to pursue investigations into credible allegations of election fraud, but warned them to avoid probes into “fanciful or far-fetched claims”.
Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the Nov 3 election by a wide margin of 306 to 232 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that chooses the president, as well as by more than 6.2 million ballots in the popular vote.
Despite that, Trump has continued to claim loudly and without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud. Those claims that have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials.
The Trump campaign’s legal team responded to Barr’s comments by saying the Justice Department did not do enough to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
The Trump campaign asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday to determine if 221,000 absentee ballots that allegedly lacked information should be excluded from the vote totals. Biden won the state by about 20,000 votes.
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Biden, the president-elect, urged the US Congress on Tuesday to pass a coronavirus aid economic package that has been stalled for months, and promised more action to reactivate the economy after he takes office.
At its peak over the summer, expanded federal unemployment benefits funnelled some US$12 billion weekly into individual bank accounts, money that propped up spending, padded savings and fueled rehiring.
But those benefits are expiring by the end of this year, prompting calls for a more extended safety net while a coronavirus vaccine is rolled out.
“Right now, the full Congress should come together and pass a robust package for relief to address these urgent needs,” Biden said as he presented his incoming administration’s economic team.
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a US$908 billion Covid-19 relief bill aimed at breaking the long deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over new emergency assistance for small businesses, unemployed people, airlines and other industries hit hard by the pandemic.
Biden said any such package passed by Congress before he takes over on Jan 20 would be “at best just a start”.
“My transition team is already working on what I’ll put forward in the next Congress to address the multiple crises we’re facing, especially our economic and Covid crises,” Biden said at the event in Wilmington, Delaware.
He was speaking alongside his selections for senior economic roles, including his nominee for US Treasury secretary, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who said the pandemic and economic damage it caused in the US was “an American tragedy”.
The economic team’s makeup reinforces Biden’s view that a more aggressive approach to the economic recovery from the pandemic is required.
The advisers have all expressed support for government stimulus to maximise employment, reduce economic inequality and help women and minorities, who have been disproportionately hurt by the downturn.
The US is in the grip of a fresh wave of Covid-19 infections, with more than 4 million new cases and over 35,000 coronavirus-related deaths reported in November, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
The virus is likely to disrupt production at factories. Manufacturing output is still about 5% below its pre-pandemic level, according to the Fed.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday that the number of coronavirus deaths in the US had risen to 267,302.