On November 9, 2020, Attorney General William Barr issued a memorandum titled, in Pilger’s covering note, “Post-Voting Election Irregularity Inquiries.” NBC News reported that Richard Pilger, director of the Election Crimes Branch, stepped down from that post the same day. NBC published excerpts of an email to colleagues. A PDF copy circulated with later documentary collections (Just Security) matches those excerpts.
The letter, signed “Richard C. Pilger / Director, Election Crimes Branch,” called Barr’s memo “an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested,” citing Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses, 8th ed. (2017). It continued: “Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications, and in accord with the best tradition of the John C. Keeney Award for Exceptional Integrity and Professionalism (my most cherished Departmental recognition), I must regretfully resign from my role as Director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
NBC, CNN, and contemporaneous reports said he remained at the Department in another Public Integrity capacity. The letter named PIN Deputy Chief Robert J. Heberle as acting director. Resigning a directorship is not the same as leaving the United States government. It is not a court finding about 2020 ballots. Barr’s memo is a Department policy document, not a finding of widespread fraud and not a finding that Pilger committed a crime by quitting the chair.