[return to Not Going Back] [return to Trump Election Steal]
Bogus Trump Claims that Biden Lost Election.
He claimed fraud before he claimed to find any evidence for it.
Usually someone makes an accusation because they found evidence of illegal behavior. Trump did it the other way around. He make the accusations, and then looked for evidence.
Before the 2020 election even happened, Trump was already denouncing it. In June 2020, he tweeted ” RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS.” There was no evidence for believing that would happen.
In Pennsylvania and some other states, in-person votes were counted before mail-in votes. Since Trump was telling his supporters not to vote by mail, this meant that early counting would show a Trump lead, because more Democratic votes came by mail. This Red Mirage was discussed in public before the election. Trump was also informed of this by his own Campaign manager, William Stepien. When the expected shift came, Trump pretended it was a nefarious surprise. On election eve he tweeted “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election.” The next day he gave a speech in which he described the [expected] Red Mirage as “We won states. And all of a sudden I said, ‘What happened to the election? It’s off.'”
Attorney General William Barr later testified that Trump claimed fraud “before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence.” Barr said that Trump’s claim was based only on the fact that “at the end of the evening, a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote counts in certain states.” Barr, senior campaign advisor Jason Miller, and campaign data expert Matt Oczkowski all testified that they told Trump this, and other senior campaign staff told Mike Pence and Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows [Select Committee Report, Sec 1.6].
His claims were rejected by his own team.
Attorney general William Barr. Trump chose Barr as someone who would be more loyal to him than the previous one, Jeff Sessions. Barr fulfilled Trump’s expectations. He used “his position to insulate the White House… from congressional oversight and federal prosecution.”
Barr spent November 2020 examining Trump claims of fraud. He had every reason to sound the alarm if the claims were actually true. He told an Associated Press reporter, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” Barr later wrote that he was more blunt with Trump: “The fact is, we have looked at the major claims your people are making, and they are bullshit.”
A group of conservative Republicans “examined every count of every case brought [by Trump’s lawyers] in these six battleground states… We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed… to make their case… because of a lack of evidence and not because of erroneous rulings or unfair judges.” Of the report’s authors: “None have shifted loyalties to the Democratic Party… Many of us have worked … as part of Republican Election Day Operations looking for the same sort of fraud and irregularities Donald Trump claimed in 2020.”
Republican leaders in Georgia: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was in charge of elections and Brian Kemp was governor. Both were endorsed by Trump in 2018, and Kemp appeared with Trump in an October 2020 election rally. They had no reason to want Trump to lose. Kemp and Raffensperger disproved Trump’s lies about fraud in Georgia, despite death threats from Trump supporters and political retaliation from Trump.
His claims were ridiculous and contradicted by the facts.
Supporters paid hundreds of millions in fines for repeating his false claims [learn more].