President Donald Trump warned Wednesday about the dangers of voter fraud but told a panel he launched to study the issue that it should follow the facts wherever they lead, and that “no conclusions” have been drawn about what they will find.

“Every time voter fraud occurs it cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen and undermines democracy,” Trump said during an appearance before the inaugural meeting of the panel. “We can’t let that happen. Any form of illegal or fraudulent voting, whether by noncitizens or the deceased, and any form of voter suppression or intimidation must be stopped.”

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was spawned by Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims that illegal voting cost him the popular vote against Hillary Clinton last year. Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump tapped to chair the 12-member panel, presided over the group’s first meeting Wednesday at the White House complex.

Pence promised a “healthy and robust debate” among the panel, which includes seven Republicans and five Democrats appointed by Trump.

“This commission, let me be clear, has no preconceived notions or preordained results,” Trump said. “We’re fact-finders.”

Even before its first meeting, the commission had prompted intense controversy. A request for massive amounts of voter data from the states late last month was met with stiff resistance, even from many Republican-led states, and prompted multiple lawsuits.

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The suits accuse the panel of breaching the privacy of tens of millions of Americans and offering no indication of what it plans to do with the data, including home addresses, dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers.

Trump said he’s pleased that more than 30 states agreed to provide information as allowed under their state laws. He said the other states should be more forthcoming.

“If any state does not want to share this information, one has to wonder what they are worried about,” Trump said. “And I ask the vice president, I ask the commission, what are they worried about? There’s something, there always is.”

Trump said the issue of election integrity is key to him because voters talked to him a lot about it during the campaign.

“This issue is very important to me because throughout the campaign, and even after, people would come up to me and express their concerns about voter inconsistencies and irregularities,” he said.

The commission has also drawn flak for posting on its website last week hundreds of comments it had received about its work – almost all of them negative and some laced with profanity – and drew criticism for not redacting, in some cases, the email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and employers of those weighing in.

While the commission meeting was getting underway, civil liberties and voting advocates were offering a running stream of critical commentary on Twitter.

Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, posted on Twitter that while Trump was suggesting that states not participating in the commission have something to hide, the voting commission “fails to make all of its [documents and meetings] open to the public.” Ho also noted that Pence said the commission had already begun its work, and asked: “What are they hiding?”

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized Trump for his remarks about the states not handing over voter data to the commission, writing on Twitter that the panel’s requests were “such federal overreach.”


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