Ex-AG Bill Barr testified there's an 'obvious explanation' why other Pennsylvania Republicans fared better than Trump in 2020, and it wasn't voter fraud
- Former Attorney General Bill Barr debunked Trump's Pennsylvania voter fraud claims.
- Barr spoke at length on PA's 2020 election results at Monday's House hearing on the Capitol siege.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr laid out his frank assessment of former President Donald Trump's election loss in Pennsylvania during Monday's House Select Committee hearing — and it wasn't voter fraud.
"I think once you actually look at the votes, there's a [sic] obvious explanation," Barr said of Trump's election fraud conspiracy theories. "For example, in Pennsylvania, Trump ran weaker than the Republican ticket generally. He ran weaker than two of the state candidates. He ran weaker than the congressional delegation running for federal Congress."
Barr added that Trump "generally was a weak element on the Republican ticket, so that does not suggest that the election was stolen by fraud."
Beyond Pennsylvania, a statistical analysis from Roll Call found that Trump underperformed the average GOP candidate in other states such as Georgia, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Barr recalled how "one of the big" election fraud conspiracy theories he tried to debunk in a conversation with former US Attorney Bill McSwain came from Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at his infamous Four Seasons Landscaping press conference on November 19, 2020.
Among the false claims raised by Giuliani included an accusation of a "discrepancy" between mail-in ballot applications for a GOP primary with those cast in the general election.
"But it kept on being repeated, and I found it annoying," Barr said The ex-attorney general said McSwain told him the theory originated with Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state GOP senator who is now the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nominee.
Mastriano, who led the effort to submit an alternate set of electors to flip Pennsylvania from Biden to Trump in 2020, has also turned over documents to the committee.