While FBI Director Christopher Wray is acknowledging there have been instances of voter fraud, he is suggesting it does not happen at the national level as often as some Republicans believe it does.
During a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Wray was asked if voting by mail is secure.
“We take all election related threats seriously, whether it’s voter fraud, voter suppression, whether it’s in person, whether it’s by mail, and our role is to investigate the threat actors,” Wray said.
He continued, “We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election whether it’s by mail or otherwise. We have seen voter fraud at the local level from time to time. So my comments should in no way be construed as minimizing how seriously we take our responsibility to investigate such incidents.”
Check out his comments below:
FBI Director Christopher Wray on voting by mail: "We have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise. We have seen voter fraud at the local level from time to time." https://t.co/T8eHUNRjEl pic.twitter.com/g5hgwMi7y5
— ABC News (@ABC) September 24, 2020
Wray reiterated voter fraud is an issue the FBI monitors closely.
He explained voter fraud “is on our radar, certainly to change a federal election outcome by mounting that kind of fraud at scale would be a major challenge for an adversary, but people should make no mistake, we’re vigilant as to the threat and watching it carefully because we are in uncharted new territory.”
He stressed incidences of voter fraud would be investigated seriously and aggressively by the FBI.
Wray warned Americans one of the biggest threats to the upcoming election is Russia, as IJR previously reported.
He told the House Homeland Security Committee, “I think the intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections primarily through what we could call malign foreign influence.”
President Donald Trump has previously criticized Wray for focusing on Russia, as IJR previously reported.
“I said, ‘What about China? What about North Korea? What about Iran’ They don’t mention anybody else. The narrative seems to be Russia,” Trump said.
