Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called President Donald Trump’s announcement of an imminent investigation into voter fraud “absurd, even for him” on Wednesday.
Leahy called Trump’s baseless claims that 3 to 5 million people voting illegally caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton another “dangerous falsehood.”
“President Trump’s call for an investigation into his latest conspiracy theory is absurd, even for him,” Leahy wrote in a statement emailed to reporters. “The President’s own press secretary could offer no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election. No studies support the President’s view. No Secretary of State anywhere in this country, Republican or Democrat, has reported any evidence that supports the President’s view. Even the President’s own lawyers stated in a court filing that, ‘All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.’”
“The President’s dangerous falsehoods must stop,” the statement continued. “I hope that congressional Republicans can explain to President Trump that he should be reaching out to all Americans rather than furthering the divisive campaign rhetoric he used on the trail.”
Leahy also warned against using false claims of massive voter fraud to erode fundamental voting rights.
“I hope that this is not a prelude to an attempt to limit the right to vote or to intimidate voters, like the voter ‘fraud’ prosecution Senator Sessions brought against black civil rights activists in 1985,” he said in the statement. “In that case, the Americans assisting elderly black voters were cleared on all charges. We must focus on real, documented threats to our democracy, which is why I have called for an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
