Rep. Elijah Cummings said President Donald Trump’s plans to investigate the baseless claims of widespread voter fraud are “nonsense.”
“We spent all that time on nonsense when at the same time there are people who cannot even vote in the United States of America. We’re better than that,” the Maryland Democrat told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday on “New Day.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed — with no supporting evidence — that 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. The President lost the popular vote to his Democratic rival by just about 3 million votes.
He has provided no evidence for his opinion but has called for a federal investigation into his beliefs.
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Cummings said Trump’s focus is harming taxpayers.
“I think it’s going to be a waste of taxpayer dollars,” he said. “What I would ask him to do, however, is do an investigation of all the people who are being denied their right to vote.”
He added, “The North Carolina legislature surgically and systematically did everything in their power to stop African-American people and people who would normally vote for Democrats from voting … Those are the issues we need to deal with.”
A federal appeals court judge in North Carolina wrote in 2016, after receiving data on the use of voting practices by race, the GOP-controlled state legislature enacted laws designed to suppress African-American turnout with “almost surgical precision.”