A way-weather-worn tale, a bald-faced lie screamed in wide-open space of a crime committed which never, ever happened, and although this should stop the bullshit — it won’t:

Today, I asked FBI Director Wray if there was any evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

His response?

"We didn't see evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the presidential election." pic.twitter.com/4NGcmBcNdm

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 10, 2021

The quick exchange:

Swalwell: Director, has your judgment changed, that there was not widespread fraud in the 2020 election?

Wray: As former Attorney General Barr, and former acting Attorney General Rosen have both said, we just … we looked but we didn’t see evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the presidential election.

Swalwell: Thank-you, director.

A snapshot of reality, which should end The Big Lie, but of course, it won’t mean a fucking thing to T-Rump and his boot-lickers and political assholes-backers.
Bill Barr last December: ‘Attorney General William P. Barr acknowledged on Tuesday that the Justice Department has uncovered no voting fraud “on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” a striking repudiation of President Trump’s groundless claims that he was defrauded.‘

Further, chief point from an election-fraud analysis by The Washington Post early last month:

Yet for all of those claims and even with the Republican Party’s concentrated focus on the idea during the past six months, there remains no credible evidence that any significant fraud occurred.
There’s lots of putative evidence, sure, random affidavits in which nonexperts allege weirdness or claims about ballot nefariousness that is quickly debunked.
But even after months and months and months of formal and informal scrutiny, there have been no demonstrated examples of systemic efforts to commit voter fraud.

In fact, a review of local news reports shows there aren’t many examples of even individual voter fraud.
By our count, there have been only 16 incidents in which someone has faced criminal charges stemming from their attempt to vote illegally.
This includes instances in which it isn’t clear whether a ballot was cast but excludes failed efforts to obtain absentee ballots.

Instead of halting the massive-asshole lie, Republicans double-down on their lying — using fraud as a cover to suppress voting rights. Ari Berman at Mother Jones this afternoon with a look at a new report screaming alarm:

Donald Trump will not be “reinstated” as president by August, as some of his supporters and allegedly the former president himself seem to believe. But Republicans are rushing to change the rules to make it easier for their party to overturn the will of the voters in future elections.

While GOP-controlled legislatures rush to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote, they are also intensifying their control over how elections are run and how votes are counted, after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results.
Twenty-four new laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration,” according to a report released Thursday by three voting rights groups, States United Democracy Center, Law Forward, and Protect Democracy.
Overall, 216 bills have been introduced in 41 states to achieve these ends.
…
As GOP-controlled legislatures take control over election administration, they are also criminalizing efforts by election officials that would make it easier to vote.
A provision in Texas’s voter suppression bill would make it a felony for election officials to give a mail ballot request form to a voter who has not requested one. Overall, the Texas law could subject election officials to criminal penalties for 14 kinds of actions, such as obstructing access for partisan poll watchers and modifying state election procedures.
Election officials in Iowa could face a $10,000 fine for “technical infractions” of election law. Arizona passed a law making it a felony for an election official to modify an election-related date or deadline unless ordered by a court to do so.
Bills passed in Georgia, Florida, and Arkansas would make it a crime for volunteer groups to pass out water or food to voters waiting in line.

These bills are part of the greatest assault on voting rights since the end of Reconstruction. (During the Jim Crow era, segregationist white Democrats also consolidated control over election administration.)
And they raise the likelihood of a nightmare scenario where GOP-controlled state legislatures use their increased power to override a Democratic victory in 2024 or persuade Republicans in Congress, if they regain power in 2022, to do the same.

“The 2021 state legislative season may ultimately prove to be a turning point in the history of America’s democracy,” the new report states.
“These are the ingredients for a democracy crisis.”

Despite the fucking FBI director saying otherwise — the GQP in keeping to its lying, is a mirror-criminal operation, which puts this country in a dark hallway to the future.
The T-Rump himself is the real-deal big lie:

“The only way…”

(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica,’ found here)