REUTERS/Mark Makela
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the 2017 "Congress of Tomorrow" Joint Republican Issues Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. January 26, 2017.
Trump was expected to sign an order Thursday after he insisted in multiple interviews and social-media postings this week that "millions" of people voted illegally in the US presidential election, causing him to lose the national popular vote.
"The president got back a little late and he got jammed up ... and so we're going to roll all that into Friday and Saturday," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, explaining the delay. Trump was in Philadelphia on Thursday to address a Republican Party congressional retreat.
Trump originally made the baseless assertions shortly after he won the election in November, and he has continued to do so upon taking office.
The president used a curious anecdote during a conversation with top lawmakers Monday to support the voter-fraud claim, according to a report from The New York Times.
Trump's moves toward a voter-fraud investigation come after lawmakers from both parties, Trump's own lawyers, and analysis from nonpartisan agencies found that there was no evidence of widespread misconduct in the US electoral process.
"The Truth About Voter Fraud," a report written by experts at the Brennan Center for Justice and cited by CNN, found that the rate of voter fraud fell between 0.00004% and 0.0009%.