President Donald Trump may have called for a “major investigation” into the reasons why he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by three-to-five million ballots, but he’ll have to do it without federal tax dollars, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

At the same time, McConnell admits: Fraud at the ballot box is a real thing.

“Election fraud does occur,” McConnell said, during a recent interview on CNN’s State of the Union, “[but] there’s no evidence that [it] occurred in such a significant number that it would have changed the presidential election.”

As such, McConnell put the kibosh on tax dollars going toward Trump’s called-for investigation.

He said, in widely reported remarks: “I don’t think we ought to spend any federal money investigating that. I think the states can take a look at this issue. Many of them have tried to tighten their voter rolls, tried to purge people who are dead.”

And while Trump has painted the 2016 election as one plagued by “massive voter fraud,” McConnell countered on CNN: It’s not “as widespread as Trump claims.”

Trump has alleged his loss of popular vote in November was due to the large turnout of illegal immigrants at the polls.

In a meeting on Capitol Hill with congressional leaders on January 25, Trump called for a “major investigation” into the matter.

Many in Trump’s own party have called for him to quiet down on these allegations and get on with the business of governing.

But in a recent Fox News interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump only doubled down on the issue.

“Many people have come out and said I am right,” Trump said, when asked by O’Reilly about his plans to pursue an investigation into illegal immigrant voting.