UPDATED: What Should AG Barr Be Doing?

It seems commenter Tom S. and I were reading the same article at the same time. Shipwreckedcrew has stepped up to explain what role DoJ can play in election fraud--as well as also explaining the limitations of what DoJ can do. If this election comes down to DoJ, in the best case scenario Trump will lose. That's simply the reality based on the laws we have. Yes, those laws need to change, but guess what? Bill Barr didn't write those laws and he doesn't get to write new laws--Nancy Pelosi does that, if she can get Cocaine Mitch to sign off on her insanity. Meanwhile, Barr has to live with those laws--do you want that job? Prosecuting individuals for election fraud is too slow a way to police elections.

With that said, here's the article:

There Is A Role for the Department of Justice In Addressing Election Process Fraud and Attorney General Barr Needs to Step Up

SWC first clearly sets out the applicable laws:

Title 18, United States Code, Section 595 states:

Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof, or by the District of Columbia or any agency or instrumentality thereof, or by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or any political subdivision, municipality, or agency thereof, or agency of such political subdivision or municipality (including any corporation owned or controlled by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States or by any such political subdivision, municipality, or agency), in connection with any activity which is financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States, or any department or agency thereof, uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Title 52, United States Code, Section 20511 states:

§ 20511. Criminal penalties: A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office—
….
(2) knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by—
(A) the procurement or submission of voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held; or
(B) the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,
shall be fined in accordance with title 18 (which fines shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury, miscellaneous receipts (pursuant to section 3302 of title 31), notwithstanding any other law), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

But then he adds:

Big city Democrat machine politicians and operatives will continue to fraudulently influence the outcome of elections if there is no price to pay for doing so.

The reality of the situation is that these remedies do not alter the outcome of elections as state government officials ultimately determine them to be.  There is no mechanism that I am aware of that would allow some federal agency of department to direct a state officer such as the Secretary of State to certify the outcome of an election not in accord with that state officer’s independent decision on the question.

This is why beginning back in 2006 George Soros funded the Secretary of State Project, the goal of which was to elect progressive candidates to the positions of Secretary of State in battleground states.

Get it? The investigative and prosecutive process is far too slow to keep pace with fast paced events like massive voter fraud committed by people with control of many of the means necessary to--if not actually conceal that fraud took place, then--shield the invidivual perpetrators until well after the elections have been decided.

Nevertheless ... SWC has recommendations, and like me (in a comment) he believes this process has started:

Attorney General Barr needs to step forward and appoint a Special Counsel to begin an inquiry into the cities where there is anecdotal evidence of ballot tabulation irregularities that shifted the outcome of the election in those states.

I believe there is good reason to suspect such scrutiny is coming. I think the first steps are probably awaiting the end of the first count in some of these contested jurisdictions. Once that is complete, and the Trump campaign seeks to have recounts conducted, it is likely we will see DOJ activity at that point.

In the early morning hours on Wednesday as big cities in battleground states were holding back their vote tabulations, an email went out to US Attorney’s Offices around the country from the office of Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen confirming that the statute which precludes armed federal officers from being at polling stations while voting is taking place does not apply to locations where votes are being canvassed and tabulated. The statute “does not prevent armed federal law enforcement persons from responding to, investigate, or prevent federal crimes at closed polling places or at other locations where votes are being counted,” said Richard P. Donoghue, the Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General, told the U.S Attorneys in an email sent at 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

This issue would have only be answered in that fashion and at that time of the morning in response to one or more inquiries from U.S. Attorneys watching events unfold. The significance is that the US Attorneys Offices may take steps to seek to have prosecutors and FBI Agents present to observe the recounts as they take place, and to take note of any ballot irregularities that are uncovered.  There have been reports from some jurisdictions that GOP election observers were made to leave election offices in some jurisdictions late on Tuesday evening, being told that the counting process was being halted for the night, only to have counting of ballots continue once they left.

Obviously, if Biden is ultimately declared the winner of the election, all the US Attorneys now in office will be removed and replaced with Democrat appointees — maybe.  But in the 10 weeks that will pass between now and that time, the process of starting this investigation should begin with grand jury subpoenas for documents and testimony. It needs to be robust enough that when Attorney General Barr hands it off to a Special Counsel, there would be an enormous political price for the Biden Administration if they sought to stop the investigation.

Anyone who expects Barr to be holding grandstanding press conferences has it all wrong. He's too busy getting his job done. And he is doing his job. And if you think he's unaware of election fraud in the United States and hates it, you're wrong.

UPDATE: For anyone who wants to read about a guy who's likely to play a helluva lot bigger role in the outcome of this election than Bill Barr--and you should hope and pray that he does--here ya go:

Justice Samuel Alito, Prophet

Is it but coincidence, we wonder, that Samuel Alito is the Justice who led the dissenters against the decision of the Supreme Court last week to take a powder on Pennsylvania? That is, could it be merely coincidence that the justice who seems to grasp the possibility of malfeasance in the swamp of Pennsylvania is the only justice to have served as United States attorney for the District of New Jersey (and to have ridden the Third Circuit, based at Philadelphia)? Or is Justice Alito just naturally savvier?

...

What we make of this is that Justice Alito has laid out the logic for President Trump to turn to the Supreme Court, as he has just done. ...