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Washington William Barr, President Donald Trump's former attorney general, toldthe House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riotthat he advisedTrump there was no evidence of election fraud in Detroit.

During pre-recorded testimony aired Monday, Barr said that after the 2020 election, Trump "didn't seem to be listening" to him and members of his Cabinet who repeatedly told him there was no validity to his claims that the election had been stolen from him, including in Detroit.

On Dec. 1, 2020, Barr told the Associated Press there was no evidence of election fraud. Later that day, he was summoned to the White House for a meeting with Trump. He said "the president was as mad as I'veever seen him."

Trump raised "the big vote dump, as he called it, in Detroit," Barr said. "He said people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning' and so forth."

Barr said he explained to Trump that Detroit centralizeditscounting process at the TCF Center downtown convention hallrather than in each precinct. For the November 2020 general election, Michigan's largest citycounted its absentee ballots at the convention center under the supervision of stateBureau of Election Director Chris Thomas. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most ballots cast were absentee.

"Theyre moved to counting stations," Barr said. "And so the normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours."

"I said, 'Did anyone point out to you ... that you did better in Detroit than you didlast time? Theres no indication of fraud in Detroit," Barr said he told Trump.

Trump's percentage of votes went from 3% to 5% in the Democratic stronghold, and the Republican former president received almost 5,000 more votes than in 2016, according to the city's official results.

"I told him the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public were bullshit, that the claims of fraud were bullshit," Barr added.

The next day, Trump gave a speech reiterating unfounded claims of "a vote dump" in Detroit and elsewhere.

My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud," Barr said. "And I havent seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that.

Barr resigned as attorney general on Dec. 14, shortly after the exchange.

Trump repeatedly questioned Michigan's election results in the wake of the 2020 election, falsely claiming that Detroit was the epicenter of"a lot of fraud."

Not only did Trump performbetter in Detroit in 2020 than he did four years earlier, but Joe Biden received nearly 1,000 votes fewer than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The statewide certified election results in 2020 showed Biden beat Trump 51-48%, or by more than 154,000 votes.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, also concluded the first portion of Monday's hearing by adding for the record the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee's 2021 report investigating claims of fraud in the state led by Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan.

The report found "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud" and recommended thatDemocratic Attorney General Dana Nessel consider investigating individuals who pushed false claims "to raise money or publicity for their own ends."

Biden's margin of victory of 154,000 votes wasmore than 14 times the 10,704 votes Trump won Michigan by in 2016.

In Michigan alone, Biden's marginalso was more than the margin by which Trumpwon Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined in 2016.

Michigan also has election procedures in place to prevent widespread fraud, including bipartisan boards of canvassers that examine and confirm results in each county.

Each record produced during the ballot counting process is scrutinized and compared in public during the canvassing process, and the state uses paper ballots that can be used as a backup if there is a question about the electronic tally.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers certified Detroit's electionresults after absenteeballot poll books at 70% of Detroit's 134 absentee counting boards were found to be out of balance without explanation.

There were similar or worse imbalances in Detroit in the August 2020 and November 2016 elections, and the same board with different canvassers certified the results. The office of then-Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republican, found "no evidence of pervasive voter fraud" leading to those imbalances.

Michigan Elections Director Jonathan Brater said in an affidavit that there were 150 fewer ballots tabulated than there were names in poll books in Detroit.

"If ballots had been illegally counted, there would be substantially more, not slightly fewer, ballots tabulated than names in the poll books," he said.

rbeggin@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @rbeggin

Staff writer Craig Mauger contributed.

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Barr to Trump: 'There's no indication of fraud in Detroit' - Detroit News