The move led the U.S. Department of Justice official in charge of overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, to resign from that post within hours, the New York Times reported.
President Donald Trump has slammed last week's presidential election as a "fraud," citing little evidence to support the claim, as numerous media outlets have declared former Vice President Joe Biden the winner. Barr's memo allows prosecutors to investigate "substantial allegations" of vote tabulation irregularities prior to the election's certification, while noting that "ordinarily" investigations of the like are not undertaken until after an election's certification.
"Such a passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations where election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified," the memo, posted by Axios, said.
The allegations must be clear, and prosecutors must believe that the alleged irregularities could impact the outcome of the election, Barr said.
"While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful, or far-fetched claims should not be the basis for initiating federal inquiries," he said.
Neither White House nor Department of Justice officials immediately responded to requests for comment Monday.
Without evidence, Trump has depicted himself as the "legal" winner of the election and has called himself a candidate for "farmers and police officers," while he accused Biden of running a "corrupt Democrat machine" funded by "Big Media, Big Money and Big Tech."
One of Trump's oft-repeated claims is that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, although he does not mention that he himself voted by mail in Florida in August. Trump has characterized mail-in ballots as fraudulently favoring Biden, and said in-person Election Day votes were the "legal votes." He has not mentioned that he has been calling on his constituents not to vote by mail for months.
His campaign has begun what he's called "tremendous litigation" in battleground states due to how allegedly "unfair this process was," and he has said he suspects those lawsuits will make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump's newest appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, could hear his legal challenges.
"Ultimately, I have a feeling judges are going to rule," Trump said at a media event last week, before abruptly ending the event without fielding questions from the press.
Last week, 19 former Republican-nominated federal prosecutors slammed Trump for falsely claiming that widespread voter fraud has unfairly influenced post-Election Day results against him, saying the president's comments are "premature, baseless and reckless" and they threaten the nation's democracy.
--Additional reporting by Hailey Konnath and Dorothy Atkins. Editing by Michael Watanabe.
Update: This story has been updated to note Richard Pilger's resignation.
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