The two bigger states he mentions by name are, of course, California and New York, both of which coincidentally were won by Hillary Clinton in landslides. Question: Why would you target a national voter-fraud investigation at states that were noncompetitive and, more relevantly, didn’t affect the outcome? Hillary won New York by 1.5 million votes and California by 3.4 million. Assume a million illegal voters in each state and she still wins both easily. The Democratic Party was awfully dumb strategically last year but even they wouldn’t be dumb enough to focus a vote-rigging operation on two states that were mortal locks to go blue anyway.

Transcript of Spicer on the "voter fraud" investigation. He suggests they're going to focus on big states Trump lost. pic.twitter.com/oBM7hAIrh5

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 25, 2017

That bit comes below as part of an exchange with John Roberts starting at 20 seconds in. The other reason Spicer mentions California and New York, I assume, is because they have large populations of illegal immigrants, a group that should be providing many of the illegal votes in the “massive voter fraud” hypothesis. Many, that is, but not all: Spicer notes that illegal votes could come in other ways too, from people who are registered in two different states and cast ballots in both to deceased people on the voter rolls whose votes might be cast by impostors. (Felons are also legally barred from voting in most states.) The “massive voter fraud” investigation will look at more than just illegal immigrants. In that case, though, why isn’t it focused on states where the margin of victory was tight and where the outcome did affect the results of the presidential election — states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida? They’re not as big as California and New York but they’re way, way more important.

Any theories on why the White House wouldn’t want to call the integrity of those states’ results into question?

Speaking of which, a fun scoop from Heat Street: On the very day that her dad was tweeting about the scourge of people who are registered to vote in two states, it turns out that Tiffany Trump is, er, registered to vote in two states.

“There is nothing illegal about that,” said Fred Voigt, the deputy election commissioner for Philadelphia. “The illegality only occurs if one votes in two places, not if you’re registered in both.”

Tiffany Trump lived in Philadelphia while attending the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May. Voigt said it was “very common for college students to be registered both where they live and where they go to school.”

According to public records, Tiffany Trump cast her vote in November in New York City and did not vote in Pennsylvania.

Steve Bannon was also registered in two states, as it turns out. And again, that’s perfectly innocent: People move from one state to another, they forget to un-register in the first state, so they end up on the rolls in both. It happens every day across the country ad nauseam. It’s a bookkeeping snafu. Unless two ballots are cast in different states, there’s no fraud. But Trump sees something potentially nefarious in the practice, enough to divert DOJ resources to sniffing around it, so on we go. The only question now is as to motive, on which Trump skeptics are split. Left-wing Trump critics tend to think this is all an elaborate pretext to justify passing new voter-ID laws and throwing up roadblocks to minorities voting. Right-wing Trump critics tend to think it’s just Trump scrambling to save face after he was mocked for telling congressional leaders that he thinks millions of illegal votes were cast, and that he has no intention of actually spending time on a serious investigation. We’ll find out.

Incidentally, George W. Bush’s DOJ spent several years investigating voter fraud in the last decade and found very little. In lieu of an exit question, read John Ziegler’s post from yesterday questioning the likelihood of voter fraud in California given the results in November’s congressional races there. Three districts with very large Mexican populations saw very few people voting on election day; one of those districts was won by a Republican by just 18,000 votes. The likely reason turnout was so low, obviously, is that many of those Mexican residents are here illegally and couldn’t lawfully vote. That shouldn’t have stopped them from voting if massive voter fraud was going on. The fact that they ended up not voting strongly suggests that there was little fraud happening. Which makes sense: For most illegals, top priority is avoiding unnecessary attention from authorities lest they end up being deported. Why would you risk your ability to remain in the U.S. in order to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in a state you know she’s going to win anyway? You’re better off following the law and staying away from activity that might give officials a reason to notice you.