The Dictatorship
California AG denies Trump’s voter fraud claims as ballot counting continues
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Saturday denied assertions of voter fraud in the state’s primary electionsdismissing unfounded accusations by President Donald Trump of “big cheating.”
Bonta said in an interview on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” that there is no basis for the election fraud investigations in Los Angeles that federal prosecutor Bill Essayli said his office is conducting.
“There are no details, there is no specifics, there is no specific allegation of any individualized act of voter fraud,” Bonta said. “And every count, recount, hand count, court case and audit has shown time and time again — not just in California, but throughout this country — that there is no widespread voter fraud.”
Bonta said claims of voter fraud are “only a figment of the imagination of Trump and others who follow that conspiracy theory.”
Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and a Trump appointee, announced Friday that his office is working with the FBI on “multiple election fraud investigations.” He said he was coordinating with Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, on an audit of California’s voter rolls, citing the state’s lack of a voter ID rule.
Essayli’s announcement came one day after Trump declared without evidence that there was “BIG cheating” by Democrats in California, citing the state’s well-known slow ballot counting process.
California law allows ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive within seven days. Voters are also allowed to verify their identity in person if their signature on the ballot does not match what’s on file. That, along with the enormous number of registered voters in California, means its ballot counting typically takes longer than other states.
That lengthy tally has been subject to repeated conspiracy theories of widespread election fraud, including from Trump, despite a dearth of evidence.
On Friday, an assistant U.S. attorney visited Los Angeles County’s main processing center, where ballots were still being counted from Tuesday’s primaries. County Registrar of Voters spokesperson Daylyn Presley confirmed to MS NOW that the prosecutor was given an overview of the county’s public observation program and a tour of the ballot processing operations.
A spokesperson for Bonta told MS NOW that the attorney general’s office sent a representative to the ballot processing center at the same time that the Department of Justice official was there. The spokesperson said Bonta wanted to have eyes on the ground and ensure “nothing crazy is going on.”
Bonta told “The Weekend” that his office sent its own monitor to the center “to be present, to observe, to ensure there was no interference or anything inappropriate.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.