Newly-appointed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Friday that there’s “some merit” to President Trump’s claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

“If the president says it … there’s probably some level of truth to that,” Scaramucci said when asked if he stood by Trump’s claim. “I think what we have found sometimes, the president says stuff, some of you guys in the media think it’s not true, [but] it turns out it’s closer to the truth than people think.”

Trump’s commission on election integrity held its first meeting earlier this week. Speaking to the group, Trump called its work a “sacred duty” and expressed hope it would find the “full truth.”

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“Every time voter fraud occurs, it cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen and undermines democracy,” he said at the meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House. “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.”

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as the vice chairman of the commission, said the country “may never know” if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Democratic super PAC to hit Trump in battleground states over coronavirus deaths Battle lines drawn on precedent in Supreme Court fight MORE actually won the popular vote.

Pressed by NBC News's Katy Tur in a Wednesday interview about whether Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election, Kobach quickly cast doubt on the results, saying, "We will probably never know the answer to that question."

But he said the votes that led to President Trump's electoral victory in November were "absolutely" in doubt, as well.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud handed Clinton the popular vote in November's presidential election.