The January 6 committee hearings prominently feature the video testimony of former Attorney General Bill Barr. In fact, they played it — again — yesterday. It’s understandable that they would, considering Barr said Trump’s claims of fraud were horse hockey (though he didn’t say “horse hockey”). It seemed to Democrats as if Barr were saying that Trump had no legitimate cause for challenging the election of 2020 and so had been trying to steal it.

If you’ve had trouble reconciling the AG who appointed John Durham to look into election interference against Trump in 2016 (the Russia Hoax) with the AG who seemingly discounts all election interference against Trump in 2020, Margot Cleveland at The Federalist is here to enlighten us. The justification Democrats feel for parading Barr’s testimony is misplaced.

Actually, as is often the case, neither side is getting it entirely right.

Did Bill Barr Really Discount All Election Fraud from 2020?

As attorney general, Barr was limited to looking at violations of federal election law. Therefore, Cleveland says, “in the aftermath of the November 2020 election, the former attorney general did not scrutinize, nor should he have, violations of state election law or potential violations of the Equal Protection Clause caused by the states’ disparate standards applied during the election.”

So he wasn’t talking about those. Yet the Democrats made it seem as though Barr were discounting all election fraud. That was not the case. As Cleveland states, “…Trump’s legal team had solid evidence of systemic violations of the election code and the widespread counting of illegal votes, as well as Equal Protection violations. Further, in the case of Georgia, there were enough illegal votes cast to likely render the state’s election results void.”

She explains:

Trump’s legal team obtained solid evidence that as many as 30,000 Georgia residents voted illegally in their prior county in 2020. Trump never had his day in court on this challenge, though, which theoretically could have resulted in Georgia’s election results tossed. That’s not the business of the attorney general, however, so those Republicans seeing Barr as derelict misunderstand his role. Likewise, those Democrats championing Barr’s words, believing it establishes a coup attempt by Trump, ignore that his testimony focused solely on [federal] election fraud.

What Barr didn’t investigate — and wasn’t supposed to — were “the many violations of state election law highlighted by Trump’s legal team in their lawsuits challenging election results.” The Democrats are trying to make it look as though Barr’s dismissal of violations were all-inclusive and that he was accusing Trump of a coup. That’s not what Barr said, though we wish he had been clear about his limited scope.

‘Outside His Wheelhouse’

Barr also observed that “that 2,000 MULES movie” had not changed his mind. Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza didn’t let that go, calling the January 6 hearings “one-sided propaganda” (which they clearly are) and inviting Barr to try to rebut the movie. The jury is still out on the “mules,” but remember, the movie is about violations of state election laws on ballot harvesting, which Barr in his capacity as AG does not address at all.

Again, “While Barr could testify concerning the cases of voter fraud the Department of Justice investigated…the former attorney general did not scrutinize, nor should he have, violations of state election law or potential violations of the Equal Protection Clause caused by the states’ disparate standard applied during the election.” And Trump had solid evidence of these.

Barr even said something that Cleveland says shows state election law is “outside his wheelhouse.” He “seemed to suggest,” she said, that a court would need to identify illegally cast or harvested ballots to rule election results invalid, when that is not correct. For example, all Georgia needs to call for a new election is evidence establishing there are “more illegal or irregular votes than the margin of victory.”

Trump’s team had already compiled this when he called the Georgia secretary of state’s office and said to “find” the votes. The votes had already been found. But Georgia courts still refused to consider his challenges.

The Future of America and Her Electoral System

There were many more irregularities, though it’s taken more than a year for some of them to emerge. Cleveland says, “…evidence accumulated since Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election makes clear that in every swing state, systemic violations of the electoral code occurred.” And they still haven’t been addressed.

“…Election integrity is not about Trump or Barr,” she says, “nor Democrats or Republicans: it is about our country and her future. That future depends on a serious revamping of the American electoral system — and soon.” That’s what we should be holding hearings for, not deceitful partisan politics.

Hillary: ‘The Projection Lives Loudly Within Her’

Speaking of deceitful partisan politics, she also has a new piece about Hillary Clinton.

Read the whole thing, but first, I can’t resist quoting the opening line: “Hillary Clinton needs to sit down, shut up, and stay out of the public sphere forever.” Hillary slams Trump for saying the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, Cleveland says, “while continuing to insinuate some six years later that the presidency was stolen from her.”

Hillary seeks to convince us that the only challenges Trump made were based on “crazy conspiracy theories” and that they were a direct link to the violence at the Capitol. Wrong on both counts.

Cleveland cites a major irony: that for all her criticism of Trump for rejecting the 2020 outcome, Hillary — the “woman behind the curtain” during the crazy Russia Hoax — is the reason Trump and many supporters found “even the most bizarre theories of voter fraud” believable.

Cleveland quickly runs through the details of the Russia Hoax, just to show how crazy it looks in retrospect, in a summary she says “doesn’t even scratch the surface of the plot hatched, paid for, and executed by the Clinton campaign.” She reminds us that this plot continued long after Trump was in the White House.

“Yet Clinton claims Trump is the one who ‘wage[d] a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results and prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history.’ The projection lives loudly within her.”

Really, Hillary?

Clinton clearly remains in denial about her 2016 loss, Cleveland observes, providing evidence from an interview she gave to Edward Luce for Friday’s Financial Times. This time, she blamed Republicans at the polls in Milwaukee and Detroit, and (as always) Vladimir Putin. She called the 2016 election outcome “almost eschatological.” Huh?? From Oxford Dictionaries…

eschatological (adjective) 1. relating to death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind

Really, Hillary? The fact that you didn’t end up in the White was the end of the world? Well, for you, sure. But for us, it was just the opposite — it saved the world from your treachery. After all, it was your loss that led to us finding out just how deep and murky the swamp is.

And if Trump refused to accept the result in 2020, Cleveland says, it’s “because Clinton, Democrats, Never-Trump Republicans, and the corrupt press proved they had the will and the way to do as they please in this country.”

“In a just world, they would be shamed into silence.”

 

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.