In an excerpt for his upcoming book, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl recounts interviewing Bill Barr, the U.S. attorney general who fell out of favor with former President Donald Trump. 

Before the election, Barr echoed Trump’s falsehood that voting by mail was associated with "substantial fraud." After the election, however, Barr told the Associated Press he had not seen fraud on a scale that would invalidate Joe Biden’s victory.

Barr’s "conclusion sent a definitive message that the effort to overturn the election was without merit," Karl wrote in an excerpt published in The Atlantic June 27.

That same day, Trump issued a statement claiming that Barr "failed to investigate election fraud, and really let down the American people."

Barr and other Republicans "are being used in order to try to convince people that the election was legitimate when so many incredible facts have now come out to show conclusively that it wasn’t," said a Trump statement issued by his Save America political action committee.