There were many reactions to Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election.
Trump’s campaign staff
Bill Stepien and others
Many within Donald Trump’s campaign staff, including Trump’s campaign manager William Stepien, disagreed with Trump and Rudy Giuliani that the election should be called early between November 4th and November 7th, notably in Michigan.(January 6th Committee, Stepien’s Testimony, pp. 52-76)
Some of Trump’s close political allies even suggested that he should’ve dropped out in private, such as Hope Hicks, historically a loyalist to Trump.(January 6th Committee, Stepien’s Testimony, p. 120)
White House staff
Most of his staff in private told the President, Trump, that there were no outcome determinate voter fraud and none ever indicated that there were. Despite this, Trump would continue to spread information on Twitter and through other public means that there was widespread outcome determinate fraud.(January 6th Committee, pp. 22-27)
Cassidy Hutchinson
During March of 2020, Mark Meadows chose Cassidy Hutchinson as his aid. She later became the Special Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Legislative Affairs.(Trump White House Archives) She worked in an office next to Meadows office just down the Oval Office.(YouTube, PBS News [4:10]) She later was promoted again to Mark Meadows assistant and would consistently communicate with him every day.(YouTube, PBS News [2:44]) (People, Chamlee)
During one of the meetings she was in with Mark Meadows and Donald Trump, after hearing about the news that the Supreme Court denied hearing Trump’s case about voter fraud,(BBC) (AP News, Gresko) Trump became angry and admitted to losing the election.(GovInfo, Business Meeting on the January 6th Investigation [57:08-58:10]|Trump) (January 6th Committee, p. 20) (Business Insider, Gaudiano, Seddiq) (THE HILL, Schnell) (Newsweek, Fung) (Daily Mail, Schwab)
Quote
I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost.(GovInfo, Business Meeting on the January 6th Investigation [57:08-58:10]|Trump) (January 6th Committee, p. 20) (Newsweek, Fung)
Executive agencies and their opinions
DoJ’s investigations
The Department of Justice’s investigations called by Trump found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would affect the outcome of the election.(AP News, Balsamo) (ABC News, Mallin)
Bill Barr
Trump’s own Attorney General, William Barr, who was a stanch supported of Trump when he was first appointed to his role, even stated that Trump had lost the election and has denied that mass voter fraud could have changed the outcome to the election. He stated this both in private in his testimony on the January 6th committee and in public.(C-SPAN) (January 6th Committee, pp. 23-26) source needed
Bill Barr’s quotes
Quote
Then he raised the ‘big vote dump,’ as he called it, in Detroit. And, you know, he said, people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning and so forth… I said, ‘Mr. President, there are 630 precincts in Detroit, and unlike elsewhere in the State, they centralize the counting process, so they’re not counted in each precinct, they’re moved to counting stations, and so the normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours.’ And I said, ‘Did anyone point out to you—did all the people complaining about it point out to you, you actually did better in Detroit than you did last time? I mean, there’s no indication of fraud in Detroit.(C-SPAN|Bill Barr) (January 6th Committee, p. 23)
Quote
I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be one of the most disturbing allegations‘disturbing’ in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations … I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing great, great disservice to the country.(C-SPAN|Bill Barr) (January 6th Committee, p. 25)
Quote
I explained, I said, look, if you have a machine and it counts 500 votes for Biden and 500 votes for Trump, and then you go back later and you have a—you will have the 1,000 pieces of paper put through that machine, and you can see if there’s any discrepancy … there has been no discrepancy.(C-SPAN|Bill Barr) (January 6th Committee, p. 25)
Quote
I will, Mr. President. But there are a couple of things,’ I responded. ‘My understanding is that our experts have looked at the Antrim situation and are sure it was a human error that did not occur anywhere else. And, in any event, Antrim is doing a hand recount of the paper ballots, so we should know in a couple of days whether there is any real problem with the machines.(C-SPAN|Bill Barr) (January 6th Committee, p. 26)
Ivanka Trump’s reaction to Trump
Ivanka Trump testified on her own accord in the January 6th committee,(PBS News, Jalonick, Mascaro, Amiri, Associated Press) agreeing with William Barr about the election not being stolen, disagreeing with her own father, Donald Trump.(January 6th Committee, Ivanka Trump’s Testimony, pp. 213-214) (New York Times|January 6th Committee)