White House stands behind Trump voter fraud claims

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday defended President Trump’s claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election and argued the administration has no evidence to back up the claims because states have refused to cooperate with a federal review.

“The president still strongly feels there was a large amount of voter fraud and attempted to do a thorough review of it. A lot of the states didn’t want to cooperate and participate,” Sanders said. 

“We certainly know there were a large number of incidents reported but we can’t be sure exactly how much because we weren’t able to conduct the full review that the president wanted because a number of states didn’t want to cooperate and refused to participate.”

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The president has refused to back down on his claim that millions of voters illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election, despite providing no evidence to support the assertion.

At a campaign-style event in West Virginia last week, Trump doubled down, saying that individuals in California had voted “many times.”

“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,” Trump said. “You probably heard about that. They always like to say ‘oh that’s a conspiracy theory’. Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it’s very hard because the state guards their records. They don’t want to see it.”

The president has previously stated without evidence that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions voting illegally.

Last year, the White House convened a commission to study voter fraud, but it was disbanded after several states protested by refusing to hand over voter information to the federal government.