Sorting by

×

The false claims Donald Trump made about electoral fraud, from dead voters to rigged machines

Donald Trump has been charged with four counts in connection with alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The third criminal case so far against Mr Trump details what prosecutors say was a massive and months-long effort to “impair, obstruct and defeat” the US federal process for certifying the results of a presidential election.

The indictment centres on the two months after the November 2020 election in which Mr Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him.

The turmoil culminated in the riot at the Capitol on 6 January, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

The Trump campaign has called the charges “fake” and questioned why it took two-and-a-half years to bring them.

(FILES) Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. As special counsel Jack Smith winds down his high-stakes investigation of Donald Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, the former US president faces a slew of potential charges. The 77-year-old Trump said on July 18, 2023, he had received a letter from Smith confirming he was a target of the probe and added that he expected to be arrested and indicted soon. The special counsel, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November, declined to comment, but US media reports said the letter cited three federal criminal statutes: conspiracy to defraud the United States; obstruction of an official proceeding and deprivation of rights. Trump has already been indicted and pleaded not guilty in two other criminal cases -- for mishandling top secret government documents after leaving the White House and for allegedly paying 2016 election-eve hush money to a porn star. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January, 2021 (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty)

Mr Trump was the only person charged in Tuesday’s indictment, but prosecutors have referenced six co-conspirators, including lawyers inside and outside of government who they said had worked with Mr Trump to undo the election results.

Here are some of the claims of electoral fraud Mr Trump has made, without supplying evidence, to back them up:

The election was rigged

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the reliability of voting equipment since his 2020 election loss, but no evidence has emerged that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election or that there was any widespread fraud.

Mr Trump and his supporters complained that their poll watchers were unable to closely observe the voting and counting during the election, raising objections about signatures, late votes and postmarks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for ballots to be miscast or lost.

It led to Mr Trump calling for electoral officials to “stop the count”.

On 13 November, 2020, more than a week after the elections, he tweeted: “For years the [Democrats] have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever.

“Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency found “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised”.

It said in a statement: “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”

Dead voters cast ballots in Georgia

Mr Trump alleged that thousands of dead people had voted in the pivotal state of Georgia, which Joe Biden won in a close race.

“So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters,” the ex-president reportedly said in a phone call with the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger.

In the call, Mr Trump pushed the official to “find” enough votes to give him victory.

A report commissioned by his own campaign, however, disproved these claims. Researchers paid by Mr Trump’s team had “high confidence” that just nine ballots in Fulton County in Georgia may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. The report, which was kept secret, also identified just 23 “potential” episodes of people impersonating dead voters throughout the state.

FILE - Supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather for a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Ellipse near the White House in Washington. A new poll shows that many Americans remain pessimistic about the state of their democracy and the way elected officials are chosen. The results of the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey come nearly two years after a divisive presidential election spurred false claims of widespread fraud and a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Supporters of Mr Trump at a rally on 6 January, 2021, near the White House (Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Mr Trump’s legal team later alleged that Fulton County “improperly counted a number of votes including 10,315 deceased people”. But his lawyers relayed “concern” over that figure, among other claims, with email exchanges showing Mr Trump knew voter fraud numbers were inaccurate before he signed off on their use in a lawsuit.

Georgia’s own official investigation found four instances of dead people voting, all involving family members submitting votes for the deceased.

In one case, a 74-year-old widow submitted an absentee ballot on behalf of her husband after he died in September 2020, two months before the election.

“He was going to vote Republican, and she said, ‘Well, I’m going to cancel your ballot because I’m voting Democrat.’ It was kind of a joke between them,” Barry Bishop, the woman’s lawyer, told the State Election Board, according to a report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“She received the absentee ballot and carried out his wishes… She now realises that was not the thing to do.”

Double votes in Nevada

Mr Trump’s lawyer Jesse Binnall claimed that 42,000 people voted more than once in the battleground state of Nevada, which Mr Biden won.

The claim stemmed from a report by the Republican National Committee’s chief data officer, Jesse Kamzol.

Carson City District Judge James Russell ruled that Mr Kamzol’s methodology “had little to no information about or supervision over the origins of his data, the manner in which it had been matched, and what the rate of false positives would be. Additionally, there was little or no verification of his numbers”.

Judge Russell also wrote that “the record does not support a finding that any Nevada voter voted twice”.

Fraudulent results in Pennsylvania

In a tweet on 11 November 2020, Mr Trump maligned then-Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt for saying there was no evidence of widespread fraud in Philadelphia.

Mr Schmidt, who is now Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, told the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol riot that he and his family later received death threats.

Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani falsely claimed Pennsylvania had issued 1.8 million absentee ballots and received 2.5 million in return.

On 27 November, 2020, a federal appeals court rejected a Trump campaign proposal to block Mr Biden, who won the state by 80,000 votes, from being declared the winner of Pennsylvania.

Stephanos Bibas, on behalf of the three-judge panel, wrote: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so.

“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”



Source link

Related Articles

Back to top button