Obsidian Vault

Trump undermining elections

Jul 20, 202553 min read

Overview

In the 2020 United States presidential election, Donald Trump claimed that the election was stolen from him and that he actually won in a “landslide” against Joe Biden,(AP News, Yen, Colvin) (BBC) (Trump White House) (CBS, Watson) (AP News, Freking) (C-SPAN [3:34:06]) which follows a trend of voter fraud claims from the past. Despite claims of the contrary from all of his White House staff and cabinet,(January 6th Committee, pp. 22-27) he continued to communicate to the American public that he lost the election by tweeting out various instances in which he believed there was voter fraud. Despite him and all his supports losing all of their court cases but one and none changing the outcome to the election,(Lost Not Stolen, p. 3) his legal team would devise the fake electors plot to help Trump win the election. January 6th would later follow as an attempt from his supporters to change the outcome one last time.source needed As of June 12, 2024, Donald Trump still believes that he won the 2020 United States presidential election.(YouTube, @PhilintheBlanksPodcast [42:17])

Election claims before the 2020 election

2012 election claims

Donald Trump would claim that the outcome of the 2012 United States presidential election from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney was a “total sham.”(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump) (Twitter, @realDonaldTrump)

He also claimed before the election occurred that China or Saudi Arabia made illegal donations to Obama.(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump)

2016 election claims

Ted Cruz and rigged election

Donald Trump claimed that Ted Cruz won because of fraud in Iowa and calls for a new election.(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump) (Politico, Grass) (YouTube, CBS Miami) Trump even claiming “it’s a rigged system, I can see it.”(YouTube, Fox News [0:37]) He would then claim that the election is going to be rigged before it happened.(YouTube, Fox News [7:22])

ABC goes into a deeper history of Trump’s voter fraud claims before 2020.(ABC News)

Utah machines

Trump falsely claimed that CNN reported that voter fraud had occurred across the state of Utah,(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump) but the article he was referring to mentioned that it only affected one county.(CNN, O’Sullivan)

Millions of illegals

After winning the election, Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that massive amounts of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 United States presidential election.(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump)

This is despite a commission he would later establish finding fraud finding no evidence.(AP News, Villeneuve) (American Oversight)

The Big Lie

(Add the origin of the term “Big Lie”)

Upcoming claims to the 2020 election

Prior to the election, there were already concerns that Donald Trump wouldn’t accept a 2020 defeat and would try to stay in power.(Politico, Bertrand, Darren Samuelsohn) Donald Trump claimed months in advance that the election would be rigged, primarily with mail-in ballots.(Twitter, @MSNBC) (Twitter, @realDonaldTrump) (YouTube, @FoxNews [21:00]) (BBC) Note that Donald Trump took no actions to make this process safer or more secure, only demonizing it.
It’s likely that Trump disliked mail-in voting in general because many believed that they are favored by the Democratic Party, with some even predicting that Trump would intentionally try to claim victory before they were all counted, including Bernie Sanders,(YouTube, newscomauHQ) and Steve Bannon.(Mother Jones, Friedman)

Election night

Fox News calls Arizona

At 11:20 p.m. EST, Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden,(Internet Archive|Fox News [8:20 p.m. PST]) causing outrage among Donald Trump and his campaign, with Senior Adviser to the Trump re-election campaign at the time, Jason Miller, tweeting to Fox News that they were an “outlier” and the others should not follow what they are doing.(Twitter, @JasonMillerinDC)

Trump’s speech on election night

On the night of the election, November 4th, 2020, at 2:30 a.m. EST, Trump claimed that there has been a “fraud on the American public,“(C-SPAN [7:45]) and that he was going to take this election to the Supreme Court and have them stop counting the ballots.(C-SPAN [8:20]) Right after Trump spoke, Mike Pence spoke and indirectly walked back Trump’s claim of winning the election.(C-SPAN [10:00])

Trump’s part

  • Notable quotes from Trump’s remarks:(C-SPAN) (rev)
    • “And we were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The results tonight have been phenomenal and we are getting ready… I mean, literally we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good. Such a vote, such a success to citizens of this country have come out in record numbers. This is a record. There’s never been anything like it to support our incredible movement. We won States that we weren’t expected to win. Florida, we didn’t win it. We won it by a lot.”(C-SPAN [1:22])
      • Saying he fully expected to win the election.
    • “It’s also clear that we have won Georgia. We’re up by 2.5% or 117,000 votes with only 7% left. They’re never going to catch us. They can’t catch us.”(C-SPAN [2:30])
      • Claiming he won Georgia before the votes have been counted.
    • “We also, if you look and you see Arizona, we have a lot of life in that. And somebody declared that it was a victory for… And maybe it will be. I mean, that’s possible. But certainly there were a lot of votes out there that we could get because we’re now just coming into what they call Trump territory. I don’t know what you call it. But these were friendly Trump voters. And that could be overturned.”(C-SPAN [3:03])
    • That was just a state that if we would have gotten it, it would have been nice. Arizona. But there’s a possibility, maybe even a good possibility. In fact, since I saw that originally it’s been changed and the numbers have substantially come down just in a small amount of votes. So we want that obviously to stay in play. But most importantly, we’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes.(C-SPAN [3:42])
      • Implying he’ll win Pennsylvania before all the votes have been counted.
    • “we’re winning Wisconsin.”(C-SPAN [5:24])
      • Claiming he won Wisconsin before all the votes have been counted.
    • “So we won by 107,000 votes with 81% of the vote. That’s Michigan. So when you take those three states in particular and you take all of the others, I mean, we have so many… We had such a big night. You just take a look at all of these states that we’ve won tonight, and then you take a look at the kind of margins that we’ve won it by, and all of a sudden, it’s not like we’re up 12 votes and we have 60% left. We won states. And all of a sudden I said, “What happened to the election? It’s off.” And we have all these announcers saying what happened? And then they said, “Oh.””(C-SPAN [3:42])
      • Implying that all or most of the states he previously mentioned he won before all the votes were counted.
    • “Because you know what happened? They knew they couldn’t win so they said, “Let’s go to court.” And did I predict this, Newt? Did I say this? I’ve been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots.”(C-SPAN [6:41])
      • Claiming that if we was to win that they would take him to court and, implying that they would take his win from him.
      • Claiming that this is predominantly to be clamed on the absentee ballots.
    • “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. Okay? It’s a very sad moment. To me this is a very sad moment and we will win this. And as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.”(C-SPAN [7:45])
      • Claims to have won the entire election before all the votes have been counted.
      • Wants all voting to stop and implying that it will likely be achieved with the Supreme Court.

Pence’s part

  • Notable quotes from Mike Pence’s remarks:(C-SPAN [9:15])
    • “While the votes continue to be counted, we’re going to remain vigilant, as the president said. The right to vote has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this nation and we’re going to protect the integrity of the vote.”(C-SPAN [9:32])
    • “I truly do believe as you do that we are on the road to victory and we will make America great again, again. Thank you, Mr. President.”(C-SPAN [10:00])
      • Implying that they have yet to win the election and still may lose.

Hillary conceding the 2016 election

Many Republicans claim that Trump’s denial of the election results is the same as Hillary Clinton calling Trump an “illegitimate president” and her problems with the election on election week.(Washington Post, Itkowitz) (ABC The View)
However, Hillary Clinton conceded the election within that same week and recognized Trump’s election victory on November 9th, 2016,(TIME, Reilly) saying we need to accept him with an “open mind.”(CBS News) Trump has yet to ever concede the 2020 United States presidential election to this day (7/22/2024).

(YouTube, ABC News)

Claims of fraud in 2020 election

https://ifapray.org/blog/voter-fraud-across-the-nation-state-by-state-examples/

General claims

Rescanning ballots

During the counting process by poll workers, sometimes a ballot doesn’t get scanned correctly the first time. When this happens, the poll worker will rescan the ballot to get the accurate result towards the appropriate candidate. It’s similar to how when you buy a soda at a vending machine and it does not correctly read your dollar bill, so it spits it back out towards the customer.(TIME, Bowden, Teague) (Detroit News, Mauger) Despite this simple process that has existed for years, including being used in states like Texas,(THE HILL, Williams) Donald Trump and his supports have claimed that instead of rescanning it because of a reading error, they believe they are rescanning ballots specifically for Joe Biden and not doing so for himself or completely ignoring his ballots all together.(Instagram, steve_mudflap_mcgrew)

Ballot harvesting

Ballot harvesting is the process of collecting ballots by someone who is the voter themselves and delivering the ballot(s) to the polling station on their behalf.(FindLaw, Temme)
Several claims have gone around of blurry videos showing people depositing ballots into ballot boxes that allegedly show voter fraud.(Twitter, @TalkMullins)

The video above, for instance, claims that the man in the video is illegally ballot harvesting and is taking a picture of the ballots to get paid for a malicious plan to rig the 2020 United States presidential election. These claims, however, rely on many assumptions that are not clear in the video. We don’t know when exactly the video took place, we don’t know if the signatures in the ballots were correct, we don’t even know if they are actually ballots or if they were ever counted. There are too many unknown variables that this video does not even imply towards that would make it difficult to make any strong claims about it.

In Georgia, which is where many of the voter fraud claims spawned from and is where this video supposedly takes place, the law was changed in 2019 so that it would require that only relatives, caregivers, and certain designated individuals of the voter can deliver their ballot to a polling station,(WXIA-TV, Raymond) along with other exceptions.(Georgia Code § 21-2-385)

Quote

…mailing or delivery may be made by the elector’s mother, father, grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, spouse, son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, or an individual residing in the household of such elector. The absentee ballot of a disabled elector may be mailed or delivered by the caregiver of such disabled elector, regardless of whether such caregiver resides in such disabled elector’s household. The absentee ballot of an elector who is in custody in a jail or other detention facility may be mailed or delivered by any employee of such jail or facility having custody of such elector.(Georgia Code § 21-2-385)

In fact, most states have some sort of ballot harvesting law allowing at least some individuals to deliver ballots on behalf of another individual, with a few states having no laws surrounding it and only one state specifically banning it.(Ballotpedia)
(Ballotpedia)

Mail-in voting

In the majority of states at the time, mail-in ballots were allowed to be sent out to any citizen upon request with only a couple automatically mailing them out to all citizens regardless of a request.(Ballotpedia)
TBA

Georgia

Mysterious suitcase of ballots

A claim was surfaced that poll workers illegally counted fraudulent ballots during the late hours of the night in Fulton county by OAN, which Donald Trump would later go on to popularize.(YouTube, Donald J Trump|OAN)

The Chief Operating Officer in the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, told local Georgian reporters how the video is cut up and taken out of context and that the video did not show any evidence of voter fraud.

While it was true that when counting resumed in the later hours of the night that the news and poll watchers were not on sight, there was a full video of the counting and Joe Biden was already leading Fulton county before absentee counting even started.(11alive, Keefe)

“No magically-appearing ballots,” Gabriel Sterling with the Secretary of State’s office said. “These were ballots that were processed in front of the monitors, processed in front of the monitors and placed there in front of the monitors.”(WSB-TV2, Gray)
The containers, claimed by Rudy Giuliani to be suitcases, were actually sealed ballot containers, placed there hours earlier, which OAN and Giuliani cut from their original reposts of the video. (USA Today, Brown)

Investigations by the Georgia Security of State themselves also verified this claim.(Northern District of Georgia) (Georgia Security of State)
OAN would later go on to be proven wrong about their claims in civil court.(FOX29, AP News) (THE HILL, Mastrangelo)

Water Leak

Some claimed that a water leak was intentionally caused to cause disruption in counting the votes, allowing more fraud to occur for Joe Biden. The issue with this is simply a timeline problem, where the water leak happened hours apart in the morning (6:07 a.m.) before the boxes of ballots were even pulled out.(State Farm Arena) (Twitter, @FultonInfo)

BJay Pak’s opinion

BJay Pak, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia appointed by Donald Trump,(DoJ, 2019) has a conversation with William Barr about supposed election crimes in Georgia, particularly the one about a mysterious suitcase, in which Barr told Pak, “make it priority to get to the bottom of — to try to substantiate the allegation made by Mr. Giuliani.”(NPR|January 6th Committee) (YouTube, @PBSNewsHour [1:40]) He would later go on in the same testimony that this allegation by Giuliani was false.

BJay Pak

Unfortunately, during the Senate hearing, Mr. Giuliani only played a clip that showed them pulling out the official ballot box from under the table and referring to that as a smoking gun of fraud in — in Fulton County, when in actuality in review of the entire video, it showed that that was actually an official ballot box that was kept underneath the — the tables.(NPR|January 6th Committee) (YouTube, @PBSNewsHour [3:34])

BJay Pak

I notified both of them on separate calls. I told them exactly what was found. And in particular to Attorney General Barr, I told him that we had looked into it. We’ve done several things, including interviewing the witnesses. I listened to the tapes and reviewed the videotape myself and that there was nothing there; Giuliani was wrong in representing that this was a suitcase full of ballots.(January 6th Committee, Pak’s Testimony, p. 19)

PBS News, BJay Pak

The FBI investigated the claim, Pak said, but “determined nothing irregular happened in the counting,” and said the claims were false.
Lofgren asked Pak to confirm that there was “no widespread fraud sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the election.”
“That is correct,” Pak said.(PBS News, Grabenstein) (YouTube, @PBSNewsHour [4:15])

Trump’s claims about the election after “no evidence” was found would later the reason why he resigned from his position and returned to private practice.

Ballots inside dumpster

Reports were made that ballots, primarily of Trump were found in a dumpster behind an election office.(Twitter, @KimonaQ) These, however, were not ballots, confirmed by the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office.(AP News, Joffe-Block) (Facebook, spaldingsheriff)

Spalding County Sheriff’s Office

This morning at approximately 9:00 a.m., an investigator from the Secretary of State’s Office arrived at the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office, and along with my crime scene investigators and criminal investigators. While I was standing with them, they went through each bag, documenting and photographing what was found. The contents of those bags will be secured at the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office until further orders from the Secretary of State’s Office. To clear up a few of the rumors:

  1. No one was allowed into the Election’s Office last night. Those having that issue have been directed to contact the Secretary of State’s Office with their complaints.
  2. On my orders, people were asked to step away from the dumpster and its contents, and they complied immediately. “Crime Scene” tape was put up in order to keep anyone away from the dumpster until its contents could be photographed and contents secured by my investigators. Deputies stayed with the dumpster until this was accomplished.
  3. There were no ballots found in the dumpster by anyone last night.
  4. There were no ballots found in any of the contents of the dumpster that were searched this morning by the Secretary of State’s Office and my investigators
  5. What was found were empty envelopes that were used to mail ballots to the election’s office. Those envelopes are marked “Ballot”. Each had been opened and they were all empty.
  6. There were documents, not ballots, found in the contents of the dumpster that for security reasons, were improperly disposed of.
  7. There was at no time an “angry mob” as has been described on social media.
  8. There were no arrests.
  9. The investigation has been turned over to the Secretary of State’s Office.
    These are facts, not rumors allegations, misinformation, or gossip. Since last night I have been contacted by local and State officials regarding this incident as well as local and state level community groups. I have kept them abreast of any updates regarding this incident and the allegations surrounding it. I will continue to do so if further incidents occur.(Facebook, spaldingsheriff)

Michigan

10,000 votes

Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that there are people who voted who have the same names as people who died prior to election. However, this was later confirmed to be untrue due to the fact that they ended up being living people with the same names as the people who were dead.(BBC, Goodman, Giles, Robinson, Horton)

BBC

With an exercise like this you are going to find false matches - somebody born in January 1940 voted in Michigan in the election, and there was somebody born somewhere else in the US in January 1940 who has the same name and is now dead. This will happen a lot in a country as big as the US (328 million people), and particularly with common names.

We then looked at the death records and quickly became suspicious on seeing that the vast majority did not die in Michigan, but elsewhere in the US.(BBC, Goodman, Giles, Robinson, Horton)

Human error in Shiawassee county

There was an issue in the central county of Michigan, Shiawassee county, where the county clerk, Caroline Wilson, added an extra zero to the vote tally, resulting in Biden having 153,710 votes instead of 15,371. This was quickly changed and had no affect on the election.(Bridge Michigan, Halpert) (Agence France-Presse, BAUDOIN-LAARMAN)

Blocking windows

There were claims that poll workers were intentionally trying to hide illegal actions by boarding up the windows with cardboard. However, this was done due to the people trying to see inside trying to record and take pictures of the inside, which is not allowed due to privacy concerns of the ballots themselves and the voters identifications.(Detroit Free Press, Baldas, Shamus, Warikoo, Elrick, Guillen, Petzold)

Antrim County and 6,000 votes

A claim would be reported by members of the Republican Party in Michigan claiming that 6,000 votes were counted for Democrats that were meant for Republicans. This claim would later be disproven through an interview with the Sheryl Guy, a Republican, who was and is the acting Antrim County’s clerk,(Antrim County) stating it was “human error.”(YouTube, @frontline [4:49])

This claim would also be reviewed by J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist.(Michigan)

J. Alex Halderman

Several of the election procedures that broke down due to human error are important security protections. Furthermore, the EMS lacks important security updates, has weak authentication and access control mechanisms, and is vulnerable to compromise if an attacker has physical access to the computer. These are serious vulnerabilities that should be mitigated on a priority basis, but there is no evidence that any of these problems was ever exploited in Antrim County. My analysis has precisely accounted for all known anomalies in Antrim’s November 2020 election results, and none was the product of a security breach.(Michigan)

Despite all of the claims made, Donald Trump still beat Joe Biden within Antrim County, with Biden earning 5,960 votes, and Trump earning 9,748(Michigan)

Pennsylvania

Voter birthdays

Some votes had a birthday that displayed ‘01/01/1800,’ however, this is merely done for confidentiality and victims of violence.(AP News, Lajka)

AP News

In Pennsylvania, some active voters are listed with the birthdate ‘01/01/1800.’ That date is used for “confidentiality reasons of the registered voters,” such as if they’re victims of domestic violence, according to a state website.(AP News, Lajka)

Republicans passing mail-in ballot law

Pennsylvanian Republicans in 2019 passed a law that would make it easier to vote by mail, which they would later go on to complain about in the 2020 United States presidential election.(NPR, Wang) (Pennsylvania General Assembly)

Court battles

Lost, not stolen

Following the apparent loss of the 2020 United States presidential election by Donald Trump, he, his allies, and supporters filed from around 50 to around 62-65 notable lawsuits over time, against state and federal governments claiming there has been voter fraud.(AP News, Richer) (USA Today, Cummings, Garrison, Sergent) (Lost Not Stolen, p. 3) (TIME, Abramson) At least twenty were dismissed before hearing any of the merits, fourteen were voluntarily dismissed by the defendant, and thirty were heard on the merits. Only one case was won by Trump.(AP News, Richer) (USA Today, Cummings, Garrison, Sergent) (Lost Not Stolen, p. 3) (TIME, Abramson) Many of the judges in the court cases that were lost were from judges appointed by Republicans, and even some by Trump himself.(AP News, Long, White)

TCF Center claims

There were videos taken of delivery trucks taking ballots to the TCF center in Detroit, with some claiming, including the Gateway Pundit,(Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft) that these were tens of thousands of illegal ballots. Some residents claimed, such as Trejo, that these ballots were being delivered well past their deadline of 8 p.m., at around 3 a.m., to try and hide their illegal actions.

These allegations, however, are not substantiated. Trejo’s claims of a deadline only applied to voters casting absentee ballots to clerk’s offices, not for counting the ballots for poll workers.(AP News, Swenson) (Detroit Free Press, Baldas, Shamus, Warikoo, Elrick, Guillen, Petzold) Other claims were too “generalized” for the court to reasonably find any foul play. One claim was that signatures were not being compared properly, which was misleading since they were already confirmed at the Detroit Election Headquarters prior to delivery.(Michigan Court, Kenny, p. 4)

Michigan Court

Ms. Jacob’s information is generalized. It asserts behavior with no date, location,
frequency, or names of employees. In addition, Ms. Jacob’s offers no indication of
whether she took steps to address the alleged misconduct or to alter any supervisor about the alleged voter fraud. Ms. Jacob only came forward after the unofficial results of the voting indicated former Vice President Biden was the winner in the state of Michigan.(Michigan Court, Kenny, p. 4)

Michigan Court

Ms. Jacob also alleges misconduct and fraud when she worked at the TCF Center. She claims supervisors directed her not to compare signatures on the ballot envelopes she was processing to determine whether or not they were eligible voters. She also states that supervisors directed her to “pre-date” absentee ballots received at the TCF Center on November 4, 2020. Ms. Jacob ascribes a sinister motive for these directives. Evidence offered by long-time State Elections Director Christopher Thomas, however, reveals there was no need for comparison of signatures at the TCF Center because eligibility had been reviewed and determined at the Detroit Election Headquarters on West Grand Blvd. Ms. Jacob was directed not to search for or compare signatures because the task had already been performed by other Detroit city clerks at a previous location in compliance with MCL 168.765a.(Michigan Court, Kenny p. 4)

Wild turnout percentages affidavits

Two tables from Russell Ramsland’s affidavit of supposed turnout rates for various Michigan precincts was made showing wild turnout percentages, with the highest at 782%. The issue with the table is that most of the turnout rates are not only incorrect, but some of the precincts don’t even exist, such as “Spring Lake Township, Precinct 6 — B.”(USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Hendrickson)

Pennsylvania Supreme Court signatures ruling

Pennsylvania ruled that mail-in ballots cannot be rejected based on unverified signatures.(Pennsylvania Supreme Court) Of the seven justices on the court, six were Democrats and two were Republican, with all five Democrat justices signed the majority opinion, one Republican justice wrote a concurring opinion, and the other Republican justice ruling in the minority.(Politico, Montellaro)

2000 Mules

Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza created a documentary attempting to prove election fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election. This documentary would later lead to a defamation lawsuit filed by one of the people it alledges helped with the election fraud.(NPR, Dreisbach)

Defamation lawsuits

Freeman and Moss poll workers

Two notable poll workers accused of voter fraud, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, sued OAN, Rudy Giuliani, and The Gateway Pundit for defamation. They won against Rudy Giuliani, with him admitting he lied about the claims he made about them; OAN settled out of court and admitting there was “no widespread voter fraud,“(FOX29, AP News) (THE HILL, Mastrangelo) and the Gateway Pundit case is still on-going. Notably, the Gateway Pundit tried to get out of it initially by claiming bankruptcy,(Reuters, Knauth) but a judge dismissed the bankruptcy, allowing the defamation lawsuit to go through.(Protect Democracy) (Reuters, Knauth)

Giuliani’s defamation of poll workers

Giuliani admitted to lying in a defamation lawsuit against poll workers in Georgia about voter fraud, the lawsuit took place in D.C., which he would later lose.(Court Listener) (USA Today, Kochi) (The Conversation, Inglis, Greenky, Schor, Kraft) (Politico, Gerstein, Cheney) (AP News, Brumback) (CBS News, Quinn) The claims made by Giuliani caused create stress to the one’s he lied about.(Reuters, Goudsward)

Rudy Giuliani's Defense

That Defendant Giuliani, for the purposes of this litigation only, does not contest that, to the extent the statements were statements of fact and other wise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false. This stipulation does not affect Giuliani’s ability to seek setoff, offset or settlement credit, or his argument that his statements are constitutionally protected statements or opinions or any applicable statute of limitations, or that Giuliani’s statements, in fact, caused Plaintiffs any damages, and the amount of any alleged damages which Giuliani’s statements may have caused or any other legal defense not expressly waived by this Stipulation;(Court Listener)

Rudy Giuliani's Defense

That Defendant Giuliani does not contest, solely for the purposes of this litigation, including on any appeal in this litigation, the factual elements of liability (subject to any retained affirmative defenses not expressly waived herein) regarding Plaintiffs’ claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress and other related tort claims. This stipulation does not affect Giuliani’s ability to seek setoff, offset or settlement credit, or his argument that his statements are constitutionally protected statements or opinions or any applicable statute of limitations, or that Giuliani’s conduct, in fact, caused Plaintiffs any damages, and the amount of any alleged damages Giuliani’s conduct may have caused or any other legal defense not expressly waived by this Stipulation.(Court Listener)

The claims made by Giuliani were so harming that Ruby Freeman would have to call the police for times when people would try to harm her.(Reuters, Szep, So)

Reuters

Two days later, a panicked Freeman called 911 again, after hearing loud banging on her door just before 10 p.m. Strangers had come the night before, too. She begged the dispatcher for assistance. “Lord Jesus, where’s the police?” she asked, according to the recording, obtained by Reuters in a records request. “I don’t know who keeps coming to my door.”(Reuters, Szep, So)

Fox News defamation of Dominion

On March 26th, 2021, Dominion Voting filed a lawsuit against Fox News for continuously publishing and promoting knowingly false information about their companies involvement in the 2020 United States presidential election.(Washington Post, Izadi, Farhi) Many Fox News employees, including Tucker Carlson, believed that the stories they were wrong and reckless.
See Dominion v. Fox News for more information.

2000 Mules defamation of Andrews

TBA

Actions following November 4th

Trump pushing claims told were false

From November of 2020 to January of 2021, Donald Trump would make numerus public claims after being told in private that those claims were false.(January 6th Committee, pp. 22-27)

Being Informed of the False ClaimContinuing to Spread the False Claim
Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“And so he said, ‘Well, what about this? I saw it on the videotape, somebody delivering a suitcase of ballots.’ And we said, ‘It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.’”(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, pp. 30-31)		President Trump one week later (12/22/20):
“There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”(YouTube, @FactbaseVideos [9:10]) (Roll Call)
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27 & 12/31/20):
“I told the President myself that several times, in several conversations, that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true, that we looked at it, we looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses, that it was not true … . I believe it was in the phone call on December 27th. It was also in a meeting in the Oval Office on December 31st.””(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, p. 43)		President Trump later that week (1/2/21):
“[S]he stuffed the machine. She stuffed the ballot. Each ballot went three times, they were showing: Here’s ballot number one. Here it is a second time, third time, next ballot.”(Washington Post|Trump [21:50])
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.” … “[W]e did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times… . Yes, Mr. President, we’ll send you the link from WSB.” [Trump]: “I don’t care about a link. I don’t need it.”(Washington Post|Trump [22:50])		President Trump one day later (1/3/21):
“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”(Twitter, @realDonaldTrump)
Attorney General Barr (12/1/20):
“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.’”(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 25)		President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, voter fraud. Here’s an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror… . In Detroit everybody saw the tremendous conflict … there were more votes than there were voters.”(C-SPAN [15:38])
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27/20):
“The President then continued, there are ‘more votes than voters…’. But I was aware of that allegation, and I said, you know, that was just a matter of them ‘comparing the 2020 votes cast to 2016 registration numbers.’ That is ‘not a valid complaint.’”(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, p. 64)		President Trump ten days later (1/6/21):
“More votes than they had voters. And many other States also.”(C-SPAN [4:33:05])
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (1/3/21):
“[W]e would say to him, you know, ‘We checked that out, and there’s nothing to it… . And we would cite to certain allegations. And so—like such as Pennsylvania, right. ‘No, there were not 250,000 more votes reported than were actually cast. That’s not true.’ So we would say things like that.”(Senate Committee, Donoghue Interview p. 156)		President Trump three days later (1/6/21):
“In Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters. And the number is actually much greater than that now. That was as of a week ago. And this is a mathematical impossibility unless you want to say it’s a total fraud.”(C-SPAN [4:05:24])
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “[I]t’s 4,502 who voted, but they weren’t on the voter registration roll, which they had to be. You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The address was vacant, and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.”… [Raffensperger]: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.”(Washington Post|Trump [3:20])		President Trump two days later (1/4/21):
“4,502 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state’s voter rolls. Well, that’s sort of strange. 18,325 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant according to the postal service.”(C-SPAN [54:22])
GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “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.” … [Raffensperger]: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.”(Washington Post|Trump [8:36])		President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“[T]he number of fraudulent ballots that we’ve identified across the state is staggering. Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.”(C-SPAN [4:22:32])
GA Sec. State General Counsel Ryan Germany (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia, but they were from out of state, of 4,925.” … [Germany]: “Every one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately.”… “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”(Washington Post|Trump [5:48])		President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“And at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3rd election. They say they moved right back.”(C-SPAN [4:23:41])
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (n.d.):
“[T]he one specific I remember referencing was I don’t agree with the Dominion track.” … “I specifically referenced waving him off of the Dominion theory earlier in my testimony.”… [Q] “Are you saying you think he still continued to tweet that after you waved him off of it?” [A] “Yeah …”		President Trump: Between mid-November and January 5, 2021, President Trump tweeted or retweeted conspiracy theories about Dominion nearly three dozen times.
Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller:
“…the international allegations for Dominion were not valid.” [Q] “Okay. Did anybody communicate that to the President?” [A]: “I know that that was—I know that was communicated. I know I communicated it”		President Trump:
“You have Dominion, which is very, very suspect to start off with. Nobody knows the ownership. People say the votes are counted in foreign countries and much worse…”
Attorney General Barr (11/23/20):
“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.”		President Trump three days later (11/26/20):
“[T]hose machines are fixed, they’re rigged. You can press Trump and the vote goes to Biden… . All you have to do is play with a chip, and they played with a chip, especially in Wayne County and Detroit.”
Attorney General Barr (12/1/20):
“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.”		President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“In one Michigan County, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what we caught. How many didn’t we catch?”
Attorney General Barr (12/14/20):
“‘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.’”		President Trump one day later (12/15/20):
“This is BIG NEWS. Dominion Voting Machines are a disaster all over the Country. Changed the results of a landslide election. Can’t let this happen… .”
Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“[O]ther people were telling him there was fraud, you know, corruption in the election. The voting machines were no good. And we were telling him that is inconsistent, by ‘we,’ I mean Richard Donoghue and myself, that that was not what we were seeing.” … “There was this open issue as to the Michigan report. And—I think it was Mr. Cuccinelli, not certain, but had indicated that there was a hand recount. And I think he said, ‘That’s the gold standard.’”		President Trump one day later (12/16/20):
“‘Study: Dominion Machines shifted 2-3% of Trump Votes to Biden. Far more votes than needed to sway election.’ Florida, Ohio, Texas and many other states were won by even greater margins than projected. Did just as well with Swing States, but bad things happened. @OANN”
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien (12/18/20):
“I got a call from, I think, Molly Michael in outer oval, the President’s assistant, and she said, ‘I’m connecting you to the Oval’ … somebody asked me, was there—did I have any evidence of election fraud in the voting machines or foreign interference in our voting machines. And I said, no, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it.”		President Trump one day later (12/19/20):
“… There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI-_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo”
Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue (12/31/20):
“We definitely talked about Antrim County again. That was sort of done at that point, because the hand recount had been done and all of that. But we cited back to that to say, you know, this is an example of what people are telling you and what’s being filed in some of these court filings that are just not supported by the evidence.”		President Trump two days later (1/2/21):
“Well, Brad. Not that there’s not an issue, because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours… . in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we’ll have to see.” … “I won’t give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things.”
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result.”		President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion Voting Systems. In one Michigan county alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country.” … “There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several counties in Georgia.”

Calls to election officials

Overview

Donald Trump and his team tried to call election officials in two swing states to persuade them to change or at least help with changing the outcome of the election.source needed

Michigan

Trump-Palmer-Hartmann call

On December 21st, 2023, Detroit News released an article about a recording of a phone call that occurred on November 17th, 2020 from Trump towards two GOP Wayne County canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, pushing them to not approve the certification for Biden.(Detroit News, Mauger)

Detroit News

The moves from Palmer, Hartmann and Trump, had they been successful, threatened to throw the statewide certification of Michigan’s 2020 election into doubt.(Detroit News, Mauger)

Despite the reporting of this call from other news agencies,(PBS News, Brangham, Midura) (THE HILL, Suter) this recording has not been released to the public.(ABC News, Santucci)

Georgia

Trump-Watson call

![[RAW VIDEO： President Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State investigator about signature audit [TlUItuAxLjg].mp3]]
TBA
December 23rd, 2020

Trump–Raffensperger call

![[Audio： Trump’s full Jan. 2 call with Ga. secretary of state [3f9426f4-7937-4718-8a8e-9d6052001991].mp3]](Washington Post)
Trump at 3 p.m. on January 2nd, 2021, calls the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger to discuss the election in the state and bring his claims of voter fraud to him. Trump said “So look, All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”(Washington Post|Trump)

Notably, Raffensperger is still the current Secretary of State in Georgia and won an election in 2022, as a Republican,(AJC, Murphy, Bluestei, Mitchell) despite the 2020 Voter fraud accusations and Trump’s endorsement of the opposing candidate.(THE HILL, Manchester)

Meetings with Trump and other officials

Bill Barr meetings

December 1st with Bill Barr

William Barr would meet with Donald Trump in the dining room with Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin, and Eric Herschmann, off to the side of the Oval Office on December 1st, 2020. They would get into a very heated argument over the interview Barr gave earlier on the Associated Press when he stated that where was no election fraud that would’ve affected the outcome of the election.(AP News, Balsamo) Donald Trump would claim that William Barr hates him and that’s why he said what he said on the news. Barr would disagree and go over how he doesn’t hate for dislike Trump.(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony pp. 24-25)

William Barr

And he wasn’t looking at me initially. And finally he shoved a newspaper in my face that was quoting the AP sentence I gave to Mike Balsamo. He said, “Did you say this?” And I said, “Yes, I did say it.” And he said, “Why?” I said, “Well, because it’s true.” He asked me what — I told him I had been looking at the various allegations, and he said, “What have you found?” And the President said, “Well, this is, you know, killing me. You didn’t have to say this. You must’ve said this because you hate Trump — you hate Trump.” And I said, “No, I don’t hate you, Mr. President. You know, I came in at a low time in your administration. I’ve tried to help your administration. I certainly don’t hate you.”(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony pp. 24-25)

Trump would bring up a few instances of what he believed to be voter fraud, which Barr would offer a counter argument to most if not all, including to the Detroit “big vote dump,” going as far to say he did better in Detroit this election and he did in the previous election,(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 25) which is correct.(Bridge Michigan, Wilkinson, et al.)
(Bridge Michigan, Wilkinson, et al.)
At the end of the argument, Barr would mention that he’s sorry he disappointed him and that he would resign, with Trump slamming his desk in frustration and accepting his resignation.(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 26)

William Barr

And I said, “Look, I know that you’re dissatisfied with me, and I’m glad to offer my resignation.” And he pounded the table very hard. Everyone sort of jumped. And he said, “Accepted.” And then he repeated, “Accepted.” And I said, “Okay,” and I left. And he sent two people — he sent Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann to retrieve me from the parking lot, and I said, no, that I wasn’t going to go back in. But they say, “Well, he’s not firing you. He wants you to stay.” And I said, “Well, we can talk about it tomorrow.”(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 26)

December 2nd and December 14th with Bill Barr

On December 2nd, William Barr would meet with Donald Trump again, with Meadows, with Trump claiming that he found definitive proof that there was voter fraud,(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 28) specifically in Antrim County in Michigan through Dominion Machines, which was something Barr already investigated and found that it was in fact human error. He would go on to claim that he believes that if Trump believes the things he’s talking about, then he’s “lost contact” with the world and became “dethatched from reality.”(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 29)

William Barr

And so I knew that the problem in Antrim was not a problem with the Dominion machines. At least, I thought I knew that at the time. And the President kept on going on about how this meant a second term for him. And I was somewhat demoralized, because I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 29)

At the end of their last meeting on December 14th, William Barr would officially hand in his resignation to Donald Trump.(January 6th Committee, Barr Testimony p. 30)

January 3rd meeting

A meeting was scheduled in the Oval Office at 6:15 p.m. between Donald Trump, Pat Cipollone (White House Counsel), Steven Engel (United States Assistant Attorney General), Jeff Clark (Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division), Richard Donoghue (Acting United States Deputy Attorney General), Jeff Rosen Acting United States Attorney General), Eric Herschmann (Senior Advisor to the President), and Pat Philbin (Deputy White House Counsel).(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, p. 122) (January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 46) This conversation would be several hours long,(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, pp. 123-124) ending at around or a little past 8:30 p.m.(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 46)

The purpose of the meeting was to have Donald Trump appoint Jeff Clark as Acting Attorney General, replacing Jeff Rosen. The reason being was that Clark agreed to conduct “real” investigations to the election fraud to “uncover widespread fraud,” and send out the letter Donald Trump wanted the DoJ to send out to States that they found widespread election fraud.(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, p. 124) Everyone else in the room besides Clark and Trump disagreed with the decision,(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 50) with several of them even threatening to resign to Trump if these action was taken.(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, pp. 124-125)

Richard Donoghue

And then — and I said something to the effect of, “You’re going to have a huge personnel blowout within hours, because you’re going to have all kinds of problems with resignations and other issues, and that’s not going to be in anyone’s interest.” And so the President said, “Well, suppose I do this” — I was sitting directly in front of the President. Jeff Rosen was to my right; Jeff Clark was to my left. The President said, “Suppose I do this, suppose I replace him,” Jeff Rosen, “with him,” Jeff Clark, “what do you do?” And I said, “Sir, I would resign immediately. There is no way I’m serving minute under this guy,” Jeff Clark. And then the President turned to Steve Engel, and he said, “Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” And Steve said, “Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice.”(January 6th Committee, Donoghue’s Testimony, pp. 124-125)

Jeff Clark made it clear during the meeting that he would send the letter to state legislatures about widespread election fraud, despite the DoJ not finding evidence of such claims, basically lying.(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 51) Everyone else in the room specifically thought the idea of the letter was really bad, especially Herschmann.(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 52)
At the end of the meeting, Donald Trump ultimately decided to not appoint Jeff Clark to Attorney General.(January 6th Committee, Rosen’s Testimony, p. 52)

January 4th meeting with Trump, Eastman, and Pence

John Eastman would admit in front of Donald Trump that the proposals he made went against the Electoral Count Act.(January 6th Committee, Jacob’s Deposition, p. 130)

Timeline

(All time is in EST)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/january-6-timeline-trump-coup/index.html

Before the 2020 election cycle

Prior to Election Day in 2020

Election Day

After Election Day

2024 Election

Graph View

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