Bill McSwain can’t dodge the truth of the 2020 election – The Philadelphia Tribune

Bill McSwain is considering running to be the next governor of Pennsylvania.

He says he will make his decision by early fall.

But first the former U.S. attorney and gubernatorial hopeful must tell voters where he stands on the 2020 presidential election.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, McSwain’s expected rival for the Republican nomination for governor in 2022, is courting former President Donald Trump’s support by echoing his lies about the 2020 election and backing Trump’s demand for an investigation of Pennsylvania’s election results.

We know where Mastriano stands. He has been a leading advocate of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and is the lead proponent of backing a partisan investigation of the election results in Pennsylvania.

However, McSwain is trying to have it both ways. He says he sought to investigate election fraud in Pennsylvania after the election, but downplays the need for an election audit now.

McSwain said he was forbidden by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate voter fraud in the presidential election.

Barr says that McSwain’s claims are false.

An inquiry by Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan “consumer advocate” for voters, backs Barr’s position. Factcheck.org reports: “A day after making the claim, Trump released a letter from former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain — dated June 9 — in which McSwain writes that although he “received various allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities” after the election, he was “given a directive to pass along serious allegations to the State Attorney General for investigation.” To the contrary, Barr notes that he sent a memo on Nov. 9 authorizing U.S. attorneys around the country to “pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities.”

And a spokesperson for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro says his office never received any referrals from McSwain.

McSwain, appointed by Trump and still serving as U.S. attorney in Eastern Pennsylvania in November, announced two weeks before the election all the extensive efforts his office made to guard against voter fraud. Is McSwain now saying his office failed in those efforts?

Also, why didn’t McSwain take any legal action then and now alleging voter fraud? Instead McSwain has told a local conservative talk show host that an election audit of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania would be an expensive misuse of time and that it’s time to move on and focus on the 2022 and 2024 elections, according to a report by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Chris Brennan.

As the top federal law enforcement official in eastern Pennsylvania, McSwain would be duty-bound to pursue an election audit if he believed there was serious evidence of voter irregularities despite the time and cost of the probe.

McSwain can’t have it both ways. He can either support Trump’s lies on the election or clearly state there was no election fraud in Pennsylvania.