\n\n“The most alarming move from the Justice Department lately came from a surprising source: the US attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, David Freed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many details about the underlying situation here are still murky. But on Monday, Freed\u2019s office and the FBI began \u201can inquiry into reports of potential issues with a small number of mail-in ballots at the Luzerne County Board of Elections,\u201d Freed said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there are reports of issues with ballots, the Justice Department should naturally investigate. But the way this information was dribbled out seemed designed to bolster President Trump\u2019s baseless claims that mail voting is deeply flawed \u2014 when Freed\u2019s actual findings have so far revealed no such thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And indeed, Trump campaign spokesperson Matt Wolking quickly tweeted out Freed\u2019s statement,<\/a> writing: \u201cBREAKING: FBI finds military mail-in ballots discarded in Pennsylvania. 100% of them were cast for President Trump. Democrats are trying to steal the election.\u201d (Wolking eventually deleted the tweet after it had been retweeted thousands of times.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Freed\u2019s longer letter<\/a> about his findings so far, released later Thursday, contains nothing to back up the inflammatory \u201csteal the election\u201d claim. Indeed, it seemed entirely possible that the military ballots were opened accidentally because the election board staff thought they could have been ballot requests instead of the ballots themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also unclear whether the local election board\u2019s practice was simply in keeping with a recent ruling from the Pennsylvania supreme court<\/a> \u2014 that any mailed ballots lacking an inner \u201csecrecy envelope\u201d have to be discarded. Republicans in the state have supported this ruling, and Freed\u2019s statement did not comment on the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s uncertain whether local officials did anything wrong at all, and there\u2019s certainly been no evidence of a dastardly plot to steal the election. Yet Freed\u2019s statement seemed designed to bolster Trump\u2019s baseless claims to this effect. And ABC News\u2019 Alexander Mallin<\/a> reported that Barr had personally briefed Trump about the investigation, explaining why the White House was so prepared to pounce.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n