2, December 2020
US attorney general Barr rejects Trump’s claims of election-altering fraud 0
The US attorney general rejected Republican claims of significant voter fraud in the presidential election on Tuesday, adding to the pressure on President Donald Trump to give up his quixotic effort to overturn Joe Biden’s clear victory.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press in an interview.
Barr’s comments confirmed the conclusions of the Department of Homeland Security, US intelligence and independent poll watchers that the 2020 election was, in the language of government officials, the “most secure in American history.”
They came as Trump persisted in claiming, without evidence, that fraudulent voting practices and systems in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia had robbed him of a second term.
In tweets Tuesday afternoon Trump highlighted testimony being offered in a public hearing on the election in Michigan, which has already certified Biden’s win in the state, and a separate Republican-organized event in Virginia.
Unsubstantiated claims
In several legal filings — all rejected by the courts — the Trump campaign has sought to invalidate millions of votes for Biden based on claims that lacked any evidence.
According to official vote tallies, Biden earned 6.2 million votes more than Trump and captured 306 state-by-state Electoral College votes, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency.
But Trump’s campaign has strived to delay the popular vote tally from being finalized before the Electoral College meets on December 14 to certify the election winner.
His personal and campaign attorneys, led by , have made numerous allegations ranging from ballot-box stuffing and fake ballot printing, to thousands of dead people having voted, to vote-counting machines being programmed to favor Biden.
On November 17 Trump fired Chris Krebs, the respected head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was responsible for election security and had made the “most secure ever” claim about the November 3 election.
Krebs has since been demonized by the White House, with Trump campaign lawyer Joe DiGenova sparking outrage by calling him a “moron” who should be “taken out at dawn and shot.”
No systemic fraud
Barr, an ally of Trump, didn’t address specific claims, but dismissed the idea of any “systemic” fraud that would have changed the outcome of the vote.
Any problem for which there has been evidence, Barr noted, would impact an insignificant number of votes.
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud, and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” he told the AP.
“And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” he said, referring to the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.
Giuliani rejects Barr
There was no immediate reaction to Barr from Trump. But in a joint statement Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, a senior legal advisor to the outgoing president’s campaign, dismissed the remarks.
“With all due respect to the attorney general, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,” they said.
“We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined. We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.”
They said they would “continue our pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures.”
Barr’s comments were reported about the same time he arrived Tuesday at the White House for unspecified meetings.
Recent news reports have said that Trump is unhappy with Barr for not making efforts to support the president’s reelection.
But, likely pleasing Trump, on Tuesday he revealed that he had named an independent special prosecutor to investigate the Justice Department and FBI investigators who probed links between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Trump has claimed that those investigators, including former special counsel Robert Mueller, were part of a corrupt, political “witch hunt” by the “deep state” to undermine his administration.
Source: AFP
4, December 2020
Turkish President Erdogan says France should ‘get rid of’ Macron soonest 0
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he hopes France will “get rid of” President Emmanuel Macron in the shortest possible time, in his harshest remark against the French leader yet.
“Macron is a burden on France. Macron and France are going through a very dangerous period actually. My hope is that France gets rid of the Macron trouble as soon as possible,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on Friday.
Turkey and France have been at odds over a range of issues, including Ankara’s dispute with Greece over sea boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean.
France has backed Athens in the maritime dispute, taking part in joint war games with Greece and Cyprus amid conflicting Greco-Turkish claims to territory in the sea believed to be rich in oil and natural gas.
Ties between the two NATO allies have also deteriorated over conflicting policies in Syria and Libya, even though they have backed and supplied militants in the two war-ravaged Arab countries.
Ankara and Paris have also traded barbs over their roles in the recent Nagorno-Karabkah conflict.
But Erdogan has grown specially bitter toward Macron over the French president’s defense of the publication of offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by a French satirical magazine.
Anger grew across the Muslim world after Macron publicly attacked Islam in defense of the publication of the derogatory cartoons.
In early October, Macron said he would not “renounce the caricatures.” He instead described Islam as a religion “in crisis” and declared war on “Islamist separatism,” which he claimed was taking over France’s estimated six-million-strong Muslim population.
His remarks sparked sharp criticism from Muslim leaders and activists from around the world, including Erdogan, who described Macron’s posture as an “open provocation.”
Erdogan later said Macron “needs treatment on a mental level.”
Source: Presstv