US Department of Justice employee Richard Pilger has decided to leave his office at the Election Crimes Branch in protest over the recent memo by the head of the department William Barr, The New York Times reported, citing a letter Pilger wrote to his colleagues. According to him, Barr's recent decision to pursue investigations into suspected voter fraud incidents in the 2020 presidential election went against the department's policy of "non-interference".
"Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications [...] I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch. [The new policy is] abrogating the forty-year old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigation in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested", Pilger says in the letter.
Pilger served as the director of the Election Crimes Branch for 10 years and will now reportedly seek a "non-supervisory role working on corruption prosecutions".
Barr previously released a memo saying that the Department of Justice will be investigating any "substantial allegations" of voter fraud taking place in the 2020 presidential election. At the same time, the document explicitly says that the department has not yet concluded anything about the alleged irregularities.
"Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election. Such inquiries and reviews may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities", the memo said.
The head of the DoJ further suggested in the released document that if such "irregularities" in voter counting exist, they could have impacted the outcome of the election in certain states.
Barr's statement comes in the wake of Donald Trump's claims of massive voter fraud that purportedly have taken place in several states resulting in him losing solid leads over Biden in those locations. He indicated that in some states where he had a significant advantage over the Democratic contender, he suddenly started losing it in the days following 3 November. Trump has vowed to challenge the results of the votes in some of the states, filing lawsuits over the lack of access of GOP observers to the polling stations and the inclusion of late-arriving mail-in ballots in the results.
