Trump taps Mike Pence to lead panel investigating mass voter fraud
President Trump has chosen Vice President Mike Pence to head up a commission investigating unsubstantiated claims of mass voter fraud in the 2016 election.
The president made the announcement in an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that aired Sunday, televised just hours before the Super Bowl sporting event.
“I’m going to set up a commission to headed by Vice President Mike Pence and we’re going to look at it very, very carefully,” the president told O’Reilly.
Despite a lack of evidence to back up his repeated claims of widespread voter fraud, the president has continued to press the issue. Even after his inauguration, Mr. Trump insisted he would have won the popular vote (which he lost to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million ballots) if it weren’t for illegal votes cast.
Mr. Trump has yet to keep his long-standing promise to issue executive actions ordering an investigation into the alleged fraud.
In his interview, O’Reilly pushed back on the president’s claims, telling Mr. Trump, “you gotta have data to back that up.”
In response, the president said to look at voter registrations as proof.
“When you look at the registration and you see dead people that have voted, when you see people that are registered in two states, that have voted in two states, when you see other things, when you see illegal people that are not citizens and they are on the registration roles -- look, Bill, we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration, you have illegals, you have dead people you have this, it’s really a bad situation, it’s really bad,” Mr. Trump said.
The Fox News host continued to press him for evidence.
“Yeah but the data has to show that 3 million illegals voted,” O’Reilly said.
“Forget that, forget all that,” the president said in response. “Just take a look at the registration and we’re going to do it.”