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Meadows on Wray's voter fraud dismissal: "He has a hard time finding emails in his own FBI"

25 September 2020
Dan Ackermann

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed FBI Director Chris Wray's testimony that the U.S. has never historically seen evidence of widespread voter fraud, including by mail, during an appearance on "CBS This Morning" on Friday.

Why it matters: Meadows' statement highlights the Trump administration's strategy to sow doubt in November's election results by challenging the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which are expected to skew heavily in Democrats' favor.

What he's saying: "With all due respect to Director Wray, he has a hard time finding emails in his own FBI," Meadows said.

  • "This is a very different case. The rules are being changed, and so what I'm suggesting is perhaps [Wray] ... in North Carolina and other places where multiple ballots, duplicate ballots, are being sent out, perhaps he needs to get involved on the ground and then he would change his testimony on Capitol Hill."

The big picture: President Trump has repeatedly baselessly claimed that increased mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic will lead to widespread voter fraud, while providing no evidence to support his assertions. He declined this week to commit to a peaceful transition of power over the issue.

  • Wray did tell the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday that the FBI had seen local election fraud "from time to time" and that the agency takes election threats seriously, which he said includes potential threats through mailed ballots.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.