President Trump took credit for a Republican’s advance to the runoff for governor in California, telling supporters that he called a federal prosecutor in the state shortly after the June 2 primary election and demanded an investigation into whether the slow-moving vote count was “rigged.”
Mr. Trump made the comments on Tuesday at a speech at a truck manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, then repeated the claims on Wednesday in the Oval Office. He suggested that the Republican in the gubernatorial race, Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, became the No. 2 vote-getter because Mr. Trump called the federal prosecutor and asked for a look into election fraud.
Speaking at the truck facility in Macungie, Penn., on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said: “Steve Hilton, who is running for governor. He was up in front, just about leading. No problem. Then all of a sudden, four, five days after the election is over, they said, ‘Steve Hilton is starting to lose votes.’ I said, ‘Here we go again.’ I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California and I said, ‘Do me a favor. Take a look. They are trying to steal that election.’”
The president did not name the California prosecutor he called, but added that “an hour after the call, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hilton has won.’ Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would right now be watching the election from home.”
No evidence has emerged of election fraud in the primary election, and it was unclear what, if anything, a federal prosecutor could do to influence the outcome. Mr. Hilton is expected to face Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden administration health secretary, in the November general election for governor.
There is no single U.S. attorney in California. Rather, there are four, one for each of the federal districts in the state. None of the four U.S. attorney offices responded to requests for comment. However, on June 5, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, announced without elaboration that the office was pursuing “multiple election fraud investigations.”
Mr. Hilton said he had no knowledge of any call by Mr. Trump and had not spoken about the vote count to the president or to any federal prosecutor in California. During the election, he had downplayed the possibility of voter fraud.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Mr. Hilton said in a phone interview on Wednesday, calling any conversation between the president and the Department of Justice “way above my pay grade.”
“I don’t have any reason to change what I’ve said all along, which is that we obviously wanted to reassure our supporters that we were keeping a close eye on it and had teams standing by, but didn’t see a need to intervene in any way,” Mr. Hilton said. “That’s just our perspective. We don’t have the perspective of the D.O.J. or its resources, so I can’t speak to anything they might know about.”
Democratic leaders in California have seized on the president’s remarks, calling them an admission of election interference.
“Trump just admitted it,” the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on social media after the speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “The President of the United States is personally directing federal prosecutors to start investigations into his political opponents when his preferred candidate may lose the election.”
Election laws in California are designed to maximize voter participation, a priority that has led to notoriously lengthy vote counts. The president’s remarks came as California counties approached a 30-day deadline for finalizing the results of the primary election three weeks ago. The secretary of state in California will then have 38 days to certify the count.
The top elections official in Los Angeles County, Dean Logan, said in a statement that no one at the Department of Justice had contacted his office about the governor’s race or had influenced their operations.
“Los Angeles County’s vote counting and post-election canvassing processes are conducted securely in a transparent manner, and in compliance with California Election Law without regard to individual candidates, campaigns, or political pressure,” Mr. Logan said in the statement.
Mr. Trump has long used baseless claims of fraud to undermine trust in races he or his allies have lost. He has particularly complained about vote counts in California, where the state government has been dominated by Democrats for years. The president said on social media a day after the primary election that there had been “BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California.” The election, he added, was “under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.”
After Mr. Essayli announced that his office was pursuing fraud investigations, Los Angeles County voting officials confirmed that an assistant federal prosecutor had visited the county’s main ballot processing center. That prosecutor, local officials said, received the same canvassing overview and walk-through available to all members of the public at the facility.
Mr. Essayli followed up with another statement debunking false conspiracy claims that had been circulated online by supporters of Spencer Pratt, a reality television star and unsuccessful candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral election. But in subsequent appearances on Fox News and other outlets, Mr. Essayli said he expected the investigations would lead to arrests.
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, responded online at the time that there had been “no specific allegation of any individualized act of voter fraud.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting from Washington.
