Former President Donald Trump on Monday released a letter he received from a former federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania last month outlining how the attorney was allegedly pressured by former Attorney General William Barr against investigating claims of voter fraud and election irregularities in the state.
William M. McSwain, who served as the chief federal law enforcement officer in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from April 2018 to January 2021, addressed a letter (pdf) to Trump on June 9 outlining his allegations.
The former president said in a statement releasing the letter: “U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was precluded from investigating election fraud allegations. Outrageous!”
McSwain expressed in his letter to Trump his discontent with the instructions he said he received from Barr following the November 2020 presidential election.
“President Trump, you were right to be upset about the way the Democrats ran the 2020 election in Pennsylvania,” McSwain wrote.
“On Election Day and afterwards, our Office received various allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities,” he wrote. “As part of my responsibilities as U.S. Attorney, I wanted to be transparent with the public and, of course, investigate fully any allegations.”
“Attorney General Barr, however, instructed me not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities,” the former state attorney wrote. “I was also given a directive to pass along serious allegations to the State Attorney General for investigation—the same State Attorney General who had already declared that you could not win.”
Days before the presidential election last year, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote on Twitter that “Trump is going to lose” if “all the votes are added up” in Pennsylvania.
McSwain said that while he “disagreed with that decision,” he did as instructed as “those were my orders.”
