Attorney General Bill Barr is now openly tipping his hand as to what is coming in the plan to steal the 2020 election for Trump by disenfranchising millions of voters.
The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.
Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.
But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.
The email announced “an exception to the general non-interference with elections policy.” The new exemption, the email stated, applied to instances in which “the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency.”
Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said.
Both groups have been falsely singled out, in different ways, by President Donald Trump and his campaign for being involved in voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize ballots sent through the postal service, just as the country experiences increased voting by mail spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. He has also raised the specter that the ballots of military members, among whom he enjoys broad support, might be suppressed.
The DOJ and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Experts who reviewed the revision said they were concerned it could be exploited to help the DOJ bolster Trump’s campaign.
“It’s unusual that they’re carving out this exception,” said Vanita Gupta, the former head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It may be creating a predicate for the Justice Department to make inflated announcements about mail-in vote fraud and the like in the run-up to the election.”
I don't know what people were obviously expecting here other than Barr rescinding the non-interference policy just weeks before the election. Of course Barr will announce a "major probe into election mail fraud" that calls the results into question, and it will be in Trump states that Biden picks up from 2016. The probe will be as widespread as it needs to be in order from Trump to declare the election void and to simply assume power.
He's counting on it as an excuse to justify authoritarian violence. People still think Trump is going to simply give up and get indicted in January. As it becomes clear Trump is going to lose catastrophically, he'll become even more dangerous day after day.
The next three months and change are going to test America like it hasn't been tested in decades.
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