The Justice Department’s inspector general delivered a scolding this week to former Attorney General William P. Barr and one of his U.S. attorneys, saying they stretched the rules in rushing to disclose information about an investigation into ballot irregularities in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Mr. Barr released secret information to then-President Donald Trump, and David Freed, who was the U.S. attorney in central Pennsylvania, made a public statement about the case before charges were filed, the audit found.
Mr. Barr’s behavior “troubled” the inspector general, but the department’s rules are too vague to find he violated them. Mr. Freed, however, broke at least two department guidelines in releasing the information to the public, the audit concluded.
Investigators referred the matter to the independent Office of Special Counsel, which polices government employees mixing official business with politicking, for further action.
The rush to release information came deep in the 2020 campaign, as Mr. Trump was complaining that Democrat-led states and judges had rewritten the rules on casting ballots amid the pandemic, opening the door to fraud.
It’s a claim he would pursue after he lost the election, and still makes today.
In September 2020 the FBI learned that a local election official in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, dumped seven returned military absentee ballots into the garbage, all of them showing votes for Mr. Trump. Two other ballots were deemed to have been mishandled by the same election official.
As the FBI was investigating, Mr. Freed went public with a statement announcing an “inquiry” into the matter and wrongly reporting that all nine ballots had been determined to have been cast for Mr. Trump. It didn’t mention any of the other races.
Mr. Freed would later retract the statement and say only seven of the ballots were known to have voted for Mr. Trump and the other two were still sealed.
His actions suggested criminal charges were likely, but the inspector general said investigators determined that was unlikely because the election official was “mentally impaired” and appeared to have discarded the ballots by mistake.
No charges would ever be brought, although the department waited until “well after the election” to reveal that, the inspector general said.
Democrats seized on the findings, saying they wrongly fueled election skepticism ahead of the last presidential election.
“The attorney general is not the president’s personal attorney,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “Former Attorney General Barr’s decision to disclose ‘selective details’ of an ongoing DOJ investigation allowed former President Trump to bolster his false allegations of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, violating DOJ policy meant to prevent the politicization of investigations and eroding the public’s trust in this institution.”
The senator, an Illinois Democrat, said President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have restored “independence and impartiality” at the department.
Mr. Barr declined to participate in the inspector general’s investigation, and since he was no longer at the department he couldn’t be compelled. He did provide a three-page letter, but the inspector general said it didn’t address key issues.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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