Background
Trump's 2012 accusations of electoral fraud
Trump has a history of claims of electoral fraud, including for elections in which he did not run and for elections unrelated to politics. Between 2004 and 2006,Uncertainty over Trump accepting an electoral loss in 2016
During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested that the election was "rigged" against him. During theUncertainty over Trump accepting an electoral loss in 2020
During the campaign, Trump indicated in Twitter posts, interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated; Trump falsely suggested that the election would be rigged against him. In July 2020, Trump declined to state whether he would accept the results, tellingRefusal to accept 2020 electoral loss
After a consensus of major news organizations declared Biden the President-elect on November 7, Trump refused to accept his loss, declaring "this election is far from over" and alleging election fraud without providing evidence. Privately, he told one aide "I'm just not going to leave," and he told another aide, "We're never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?" He indicated that he would continue legal challenges in key states, but most of the challenges were dismissed by the courts. His legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines and polling place fraud to claim that the election had been stolen from Trump. Trump blocked government officials from cooperating in the presidential transition to Joe Biden. Attorney GeneralAdministration dissenters
Stop the Steal
Stop the Steal is a far-right and conservative campaign and protest movement in the United States promoting the conspiracy theory that falsely posits that widespread electoral fraud occurred during theConspiracy theories
MultipleNovember 2020
On at least one occasion in November 2020, Trump privately acknowledged that he lost the election. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a White House aide to Trump, recalls him exclaiming "Can you believe I lost to this guy?" while watching Biden on television. This, however, was not Trump's public position. On November 12, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs called the election "the most secure in American history", leading Trump to #Post-election firings, fire him and Trump attorney Joseph diGenova to call for his Capital punishment, execution. Emily W. Murphy, Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, delayed the start of Presidential transition of Joe Biden, the presidential transition until sixteen days after most media outlets had projected Biden to be the winner."Alternate" electors
On November 4, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received a text message calling for an "aggressive strategy" of having the Republican-led legislatures of three uncalled states "just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the [Supreme Court]." This was reportedly sent by Trump's secretary of energy, Rick Perry. On November 5, Donald Trump Jr. sent a text message to Meadows outlining paths to subvert the Electoral College process and ensure his father a second term. He wrote, "It’s very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. We have operational control. Total leverage. Moral high ground. POTUS must start second term now." Trump Jr. continued, "Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states. Once again Trump wins," adding, "We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021." Biden had not yet been declared the winner at the time of the text. On November 9, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers, including Russell Bowers and Shawnna Bolick, encouraging them to pick "a clean slate of Electors" and telling them that the responsibility was "yours and yours alone". On November 18, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo from Boston attorney Kenneth Chesebro outlining a plan to create and submit alternate slates of electors in contested states. Another memo three weeks later went to Wisconsin and several other contested states. The memos are evidence that within weeks of the election, the Trump campaign was focusing on January 6, 2021 as the "hard deadline" for determining the outcome of the election. The White House Counsel, White House Counsel's Office reportedly reviewed the plans to use alternate electors and deemed them not to be legally sound.Post-election firings
After vote counts showed a Biden victory, Trump engaged in what has been called a "post-election purge", firing or forcing out at least a dozen officials and replacing them with loyalists. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was fired by tweet on November 9. Undersecretary for Defense Joseph D. Kernan and Acting Undersecretary for Policy James Anderson (defense official), James H. Anderson resigned in protest or were forced out. The White House sought to learn the names of political appointees who had applauded Anderson upon his departure, so they could be fired. The DOD chief of staff, Jen Stewart, was replaced by a former staffer to Representative Devin Nunes. On November 30, Christopher P. Maier, the head of the Pentagon's Defeat ISIS Task Force, was ousted and the task force was disbanded; a White House official told him that the United States had won the war against the Islamic State, so the task force was no longer needed. Trump's allegations of election fraud in battleground states were refuted by judges, state election officials, and his own administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). After CISA director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's voting-fraud allegations, Trump fired him on November 17. Three other Department of Homeland Security officialsMatthew Travis, CISA's deputy director. Bryan Ware, CISA's assistant director for cybersecurity, and Valerie Boyd, the DHS's assistant secretary of international affairswere also forced out. Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, was abruptly fired on November 6; she had prepared a transition manual for the next administration. She was due to become acting administrator of the department on November 7. Firing her left the position of acting administrator vacant, so that Trump loyalist John Barsa could become acting deputy administrator. Career climate scientist Michael Kuperberg, who for the past five years has produced the annual National Climate Assessment issued by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was demoted on November 9 and returned to his previous position at the Department of Energy. Several media outlets reported that David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at NOAA who claims that global warming is harmless, would be appointed to oversee the congressionally mandated report in place of Kuperberg, based on information obtained from "people close to the Administration", including Myron Ebell, the head of President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team and director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As of May 18, 2021, the Biden administration reappointed Kuperberg as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On November 5, Neil Chatterjee was removed from his post as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. On November 11, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty resigned from her posts as Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and administrator of the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration, reportedly due to longstanding tensions and disagreements with Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order that created a new category of federal employee, Schedule F appointment, Schedule F, which included all career civil servants whose job includes "policymaking". Such employees would no longer be covered by United States federal civil service, civil service protections against arbitrary dismissal, but would be subject to the same rules as political appointees. The new description could be applied to thousands of nonpartisan experts, such as scientists who give advice to the political appointees who run their departments. Heads of all federal agencies were ordered to report by January 19, 2021, a list of positions that could be reclassified as Schedule F. The Office of Management and Budget submitted a list in November that included 88 percent of the office's workforce. Federal employee organizations and Congressional Democrats sought to overturn the order via lawsuits or bills. House Democrats warned in a letter that "The executive order could precipitate a mass exodus from the federal government at the end of every presidential administration, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies." Observers predicted that Trump could use the new rule to implement a "massive government purge on his way out the door." Meanwhile, administration officials had ordered the Budget Office to begin work on a 2022 budget proposal that they would submit to Congress in February, ignoring the fact that Biden would have already taken over by that point.Lawsuits
After the 2020 United States presidential election, the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign, campaign for incumbent president Donald Trump filed a number of lawsuits contesting election processes, vote-counting, and the vote-certification process in multiple states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Many such cases were quickly dismissed, and lawyers and other observers noted that the lawsuits were unlikely to have an effect on the outcome of the election. By November 19, more than two dozen of the legal challenges filed since Election Day had failed. On November 21, U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, dismissed the case before him Prejudice (legal term), with prejudice, ruling:In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs ... seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all cornersfrom Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.
Michigan officials pressured to not certify
Prior to November 17, the four-member board of canvassers of Wayne County, Michigan, was deadlocked on election-result certification along party lines with the two Republican members refusing to certify, but on November 17 the board voted unanimously to certify its results. Trump subsequently called the two Republican members of the board, following which the two Republicans asked to rescind their votes for certification, signing affidavits the following day stating that they had voted for certification only because the two Democratic members had promised a full audit of the county's votes. The two denied Trump's call had influenced their reversal. Trump issued an invitation to Michigan lawmakers to travel to Washington. Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, State Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and State Representative Jim Lilly were photographed in the lobby of the D.C. Trump Tower, where they were drinking $500-a-bottle champagne and were not wearing masks. After the meeting, Chatfield and Shirkey released a joint statement indicating that they would "follow the law" and would not attempt to have the legislature intervene in selecting electoral votes. Chatfield later floated the possibility of a "constitutional crisis" in Michigan, while Shirkey suggested that certification be delayed; however, neither took any concrete action to invalidate Biden's victory. On November 21, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox publicly called upon the Michigan State Board of Canvassers to not proceed with the planned certification of election results. On November 23, the State Board of Canvassers certified the election.Attempt to seize voting machines in Michigan
Starting in NovemberGeorgia Secretary of State pressured to disqualify ballots
The 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia produced an initial count wherein Biden defeated Trump by around 14,000 votes, triggering an automatic recount due to the small margin. On November 13Wisconsin recount-obstruction
The Trump campaign requested a recount in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Dane County, Wisconsin, Dane counties, both Democratic strongholds. On November 20Partisan hearings with Republican legislatures
On November 25Conspiracy allegations
Days before the 2020 presidential election, Dennis L. Montgomery, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a program called Scorecard, running on a government supercomputer called Hammer, would be used to switch votes from Trump to Biden on voting machines. Trump legal team attorney Sidney Powell promoted the conspiracy theory on ''Lou Dobbs Tonight'' on November 6, and again two days later on Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business program, claiming to have "evidence that that is exactly what happened." She also asserted that the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA ignored warnings about the software, and urged Trump to fire director Gina Haspel. Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the supercomputer claim as "nonsense" and a "hoax". CISA described the 2020 election as "the most secure in American history," with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised." A few days later, Trump fired Krebs by tweet, claiming that Krebs' analysis was "highly inaccurate." On November 13Threats of violence by Trump supporters
After Biden won the election, angry Trump supporters threatened election officials, election officials' family members, and elections staff in at least eight states via emails, telephone calls and letters; some of the menacing and vitriolic communications included death threats. Officials terrorized by the threats included officials in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as a few less competitive states. Some officials had to seek police protection or move from their homes due to the threats. The director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, described the threats as frightening and said, "These threats often go into areas related to race or sex or anti-Semitism. More than once they specifically refer to gun violence." Prominent Republicans ignored or said little about the threats of violence. On November 15, the Georgia Secretary of State reported that he and his wife were receiving death threats. On November 30, Trump attorney Joseph diGenova said the recently fired head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, should be "taken out and shot" for disputing the president's claims about election fraud. On December 1, Republican Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling publicly condemned Trump and Georgia Senators David Perdue, Perdue and Loeffler for making unsubstantiated claims and for failing to condemn the threats of violence against election workers, including those made against a young, low-level Dominion employee and his family. After Democratic Georgia State Senator Elena Parent spoke out against the false claims of voter fraud, she was targeted by online vitriol, threatened with death and sexual violence, and had her home address widely circulated online. Parent attributed the onslaught to Trump, saying, "He has created a cult-like following and is exposing people like me across the country to danger because of his unfounded rhetoric on the election." In early December, an "enemies list" circulated on the web falsely accusing various government officials and voting systems executives of rigging the election, providing their home addresses, and superimposing red targets on their photos. The Arizona Republican Party twice tweeted that supporters should be willing to "die for something" or "give my life for this fight." Ann Jacobs, chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said she had received constant threats, including a message mentioning her children, and photos of her house had been posted on the web. On January 1, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence asked a federal judge to dismiss a suit naming him as the defendant; filed by Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert and others, the ultimately unsuccessful suit asserted that the vice president had the sole constitutional authority to conduct the congressional certification of Electoral College results without restriction. Attorney Lin Wood, a conspiracy theorist andDecember 2020
On December 1, 2020, U.S. Attorney GeneralTrump's attempt to pressure state officials
On December 5, Trump placed a call to Georgia governorSupreme Court petitions
Before and after the election, Trump said he expected the outcome would be decided by the Supreme Court, where Conservatism in the United States, conservative justices held a 6–3 majority, with three of the justices having been appointed by Trump. On November 21, a group of Republican legislators in Pennsylvania petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court in appeal of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision against the legislators, who had asked to nullify mailed ballots after they had been cast, or to direct the legislature to select Pennsylvania's electors. The high court denied the request in a one-sentence, unsigned order on December 8. By the time of the high court's decision, the Pennsylvania election results had been certified in Biden's favor. Lawyers for Pennsylvania argued to the high court that the legislators' request was "an affront to constitutional democracy" and that "Petitioners ask this court to undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic; no court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor's certification of presidential election results." On December 8, 2020, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton Texas v. Pennsylvania, sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed Joe Biden had won, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election, already been rejected in other courts. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate those states' 62 electoral votes, allowing Trump to be declared the winner of a second presidential term. This case, ''Texas v. Pennsylvania'', was hailed by Trump as "the big one". Trump and seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed motions to support the case. and 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives signed onto it. On December 11, the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case. In denying the plaintiff's motion to invalidate those votes, it said that "the state of Texas' motion" had "lack of standing." Ted Cruz, who had previously argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, agreed to Trump's request to argue the Paxton suit should it come before the Court. In late December attorneys Chesebro and Troupis asked the Supreme Court to review whether competing slates of electors from seven contested states could be considered by Congress on January 6. The Supreme Court declined their request for an opinion. On December 31, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro emailed other members of Trump's legal team, saying that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was "key" and proposing that they "frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue" an order to undermine Georgia's election results. Trump lawyer John Eastman responded in agreement.Consideration of special counsel and martial law
After legal efforts by Trump and his proxies had failed in numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, some right-wing activists and Trump alliesincluding Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and L. Lin Woodsuggested that Trump could suspend the Constitution, declare Martial law in the United States, martial law and "rerun" the election. Many retired military officers, attorneys, and other commentators expressed horror at such a notion. Trump held an Oval Office meeting on December 18 with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Powell, and Flynn. At the meeting, Trump entertained the idea of naming Powell, who has promoted election conspiracy theories and falsehoods, as special counsel to investigate election matters, though most advisors in attendance strongly opposed the idea. Two executive orders were drafted to appoint a special counsel and confiscate voting machines, which Trump falsely claimed were rigged against him. One order called for the Pentagon to seize machines, while the other tasked the Department of Homeland Security. At Trump's direction, Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at DHS, on December 17 to ask if the department could seize the machines, but Cuccinelli said it did not have the authority. On Giuliani's advice, Trump had rejected a recommendation from Flynn and Powell to have the Pentagon seize the machines, and Bill Barr flatly rejected the president's suggestion that the Justice Department do it. Flynn reportedly discussed his idea to declare martial law, although others also resisted that idea, and Trump's opinion on the matter was unclear. That same day, Flynn appeared on Newsmax TV to suggest that Trump had the power to deploy the military to "rerun" the election in the swing states that Trump had lost. * * * * * Trump dismissed reports about a discussion of martial law as "fake news", but it remained unclear whether he had endorsed the notion. An attempt by Trump to invoke martial law to invalidate the results of the election would be illegal and unconstitutional. In late December 2020, legal scholars Claire Finkelstein, Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard Painter wrote that while it was very unlikely that Trump would actually "attempt to spark a military coup," Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen should be prepared to direct federal law enforcement "to arrest anyone, including if necessary the president, who ... conspired to carry out this illegal plan." Likening a hypothetical invocation of martial law to overturn the election to the Battle of Fort Sumter, 1861 firing on Fort Sumter, Finkelstein and Painter wrote that any such plan would constitute seditious conspiracy and possibly other crimes, and that any military officers or enlisted personnel ordered to assist in such a plan would be required, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to disregard such an illegal order. On December 18, Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, Ryan McCarthy and General James McConville, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying, "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election." On January 3, all ten living former secretaries of defenseAshton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William J. Perry, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeldpublished an op-ed in ''The Washington Post'' calling for the peaceful transfer of power, orderly and peaceful transfer of power, noting that "efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory", and noting that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic." The former defense secretaries wrote that "acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinatespolitical appointees, officers and civil servantsare each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team." Elizabeth Neumann, an adviser at Defending Democracy Together and a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, stated that "In the conspiratorial conservative base supporting Trump, there are calls for using the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. When they hear that the president is actually considering this, there are violent extremist groups that look at this as a Dog whistle (politics), dog whistle, an excuse to go out and create ... violence."Planning for Congress to overturn the election on January 6
On December 21, Congressman Mo Brooks, who had been the first member of Congress to announce he would object to the January 6, 2021 2021 United States Electoral College vote count, certification of the Electoral College results, organized three White House meetings between Trump, Republican lawmakers, and others. Attendees included Trump, Vice President Pence, representatives Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Jim Jordan (American politician), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and members of the Trump legal team. The purpose of the meetings was to strategize about how Congress could overturn the election results on January 6. Brooks confirmed after one such meeting that it had been "a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th." ''Talking Points Memo'' reported in December 2022 that it had obtained the 2,319 text messages Meadows had provided to the January 6 committee, including 450 showing Meadows communicating with 34 Republican members of Congress about plans to overturn the election.Pressure on Pence
In the runup toward election certification on January 6, attempts to uncover significant election fraud bore no fruit and related legal challenges were rejected by the courts. Hence, those seeking to overturn the election focused attention increasingly on then-vice-president Mike Pence. The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the President of the Senate, which was Pence for the January 6 certification of the presidential election, to supervise the counting of electoral ballots at a joint session of the Congress. The Trump team developed multiple theories about how the Vice President might act on January 6 to aid the overturning of election results; and repeatedly encouraged him to act accordingly."Pence Card" conspiracy
Beginning in late December, false legal theories went viral on pro-Trump social media suggesting that Vice President Pence could invoke a "Pence Card", a supposed legal loophole that would enable him, in his capacity as President of the Senate#United States, president of the Senate, to reject pro-Biden electoral votes from contested swing states on the grounds that they had been cast by fraudulently appointed electors. These theories originated from Ivan Raiklin, an attorney and former United States Army Special Forces, Green Beret who was among a small group of military-intelligence veterans associated with Michael Flynn who were instrumental in spreading false information alleging the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The theory stems from a misreading of , which directs the vice president to request electoral vote certificates from any state that has not yet sent these votes to the National Archives by the fourth Wednesday in December. Under the theory, Pence had unilateral authority to declare that state certificates from contested states had not in fact been received, and that new certificates (presumably supporting President Trump) should be issued. Trump retweeted a post of Raiklin's calling for the invocation of the Pence Card on December 23, the day specified in statute, but Pence took no action consistent with the theory. In late December, Pence called former vice president Dan Quayle for advice, and Quayle told him (according to reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa): "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. ... I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. ... You have no power." Although the fourth Wednesday had passed, Trump still believed that Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes, and kept asking him to do so; however, over lunch on January 5, Pence informed Trump that he did not believe he had any such authority. Attorney John C. Eastman, John Eastman incorrectly told Pence in a January 5 Oval Office meeting that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification, which Trump reportedly urged Pence to consider. Eastman also sent to Republican senatorDecember Timeline
John Eastman, author of the Eastman memos, began working with the Trump team in November 2020. Trump adviser Peter Navarro claimed that the “Green Bay Sweep (politics), Green Bay Sweep” plan was developed over weeks prior to January 6, 2021. On December 13, Trump allies in the House were developing a plan involving Pence "to use Congress’s tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump”. Kenneth Chesebro emailed Rudy Giuliani and others pointing out that, if Pence were to recuse himself, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa would be in charge of certifying the election, and if Grassley were to delay doing so, this would give Trump more time for court battles. Chesebro's subject line called this the "'President of the Senate' strategy." On December 21, Trump’s legal advisors, Pence, and multiple members of Congress at a White House meeting discussed ways to challenge the January 6 certification process and results. On December 23, Trump re-tweeted the Ivan Raiklin “Operation Pence Card” memo while stating “America @VP @Mike_Pence MUST do this, tomorrow To defend our Constitution from our enemies … Let him know!” On December 24, a Trump aide contacted John Eastman to request documentation of his legal theories concerning the certification process including the role of the vice president, resulting in the Eastman memos. On December 27, a lawsuit seeking to force action by Pence during the January 6 certification, Gohmert v. Pence (see below), was filed in a Texas court. On December 31, then-White House Chief of StaffPressure on Justice Department
On December 14, two weeks after Barr stated there was no evidence of significant election fraud, Trump announced that Barr would be leaving as attorney general by Christmas. Before Trump's announcement, he enlisted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other aides to pressure deputy attorney Jeffrey A. Rosen, Jeffrey Rosen, who would replace Barr on December 23, and other Justice Department officials to challenge the election results. Meadows and a top Trump aide emailed allegations of voting anomalies in three states to Rosen and other officials. Meadows also sought to have Rosen investigate Italygate, a conspiracy theory, promoted by a Giuliani ally, that satellites and military technology had been used in Italy to remotely change votes from Trump to Biden. Trump also enlisted a private attorney, Kurt Olsen, to seek a meeting with Rosen to propose a legal challenge he had drafted; it was similar Texas v. Pennsylvania, to a challenge initiated by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and supported by dozens of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general, that attempted unsuccessfully to have the Supreme Court reject election results in four states. Trump also spoke to Rosen about Olsen's proposal. Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue resisted the efforts, exchanging emails mocking them, in one case, as "pure insanity." Rosen later testified to Congress, "During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results." In late December, Trump reportedly phoned Rosen "nearly every day" to tell him about claims of voter fraud or improper vote counts. Donoghue took notes of a December 27, 2020, phone call between him, Rosen and Trump in which he characterized the president saying, "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen." The next day Jeffrey Clark, acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, approached Rosen and Donoghue with a draft letter and requested them to sign it. The letter was addressed to officials in the state of Georgia, saying that the Justice Department had evidence that raised "significant concerns" about the outcome of the presidential election, contrary to what Barr had publicly announced weeks earlier, and suggesting that the Georgia legislature "call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Both Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, and it was never sent. The Associated Press reported in December that Heidi Stirrup, an ally of Trump advisor Stephen Miller (political advisor), Stephen Miller, who months earlier had been quietly installed at the Justice Department as the White House's "eyes and ears," had in recent days been banned from the building after it was learned she pressured officials for sensitive information about potential election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. Stirrup had also circumvented Justice Department management to extend job offers to political allies for senior Department positions and interfered with the hiring of career officials.Pressure on Defense Department
According to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, Michael Flynn called senior Trump intelligence official Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Ezra Cohen and told him to take extreme actions, including seizing ballots, to prevent the election results from favoring the Democrat. Cohen didn't entertain Flynn's orders, responding, "Sir, the election is over. It's time to move on." Flynn replied, "You're a quitter! This is not over! Don't be a quitter!" Trump attorney Sidney Powell called Cohen shortly thereafter and attempted to enlist his help with a far-fetched claim involving then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. According to Karl's book, Powell told Cohen that "Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany. You need to launch a special operations mission to get her." The claim, a conspiracy theory, had been circulating among Powell's QAnon following for some time. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed that Haspel had been injured while on a secret CIA operation to seize an election-related computer server that belonged to a company named Scytl. Powell alleged to Cohen that the server contained evidence of "hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines." Powell was under the impression that Haspel had been engaged in this operation with the aim of destroying the nonexistent evidence on that nonexistent server. According to the book, Cohen thought Powell sounded "out of her mind" and he quickly reported the call to the acting defense secretary. A December 18, 2020 memo proposed that the Trump administration seek evidence that there had been foreign interference in favor of Biden. The memo laid out a plan for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller, Christopher Miller to use National Security Agency and Defense Department powers to seize phone and email records. One of Trump's informal advisers, Michael Pillsbury, described this as "amateur hour" perpetrated by people with no existing connection to Trump who were raising topics that the government had already "said there was no evidence for."Plan to seize voting machines
The then-President’s team also developed plans to have federal authorities seize voting machines from states where the election had been closely contested but won by Biden. News reports indicate that, at various points in the planning, the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard were considered as entities that would conduct the seizures. Several versions of a draft Executive Order that would authorize the seizures were prepared. Then-President Trump was reported to have reviewed the draft Executive Order authorizing seizure by the National Guard but, based on advice by (among others) Patrick Cipollone and Rudy Giuliani, he did not sign and issue it. In June 2022, an email dated November 21, 2020 surfaced, sent by British biopharmaceuticals executive Andrew Whitney, who in August 2020 pitched to Trump in the Oval Office the toxic botanical extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19. The email included a draft "authorizing letter" to be presented by the president allowing three armed private companies to seize all voting machines and related materials, with assistance from U.S. Marshals. The email was sent to Doug Logan, the president of Cyber Ninjas, which later conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit that sought but failed to find election fraud in that county, and to cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose, who had worked with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, who were seeking access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud.Ellis memos
On New Year's Eve, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a memo drafted by Trump attorney Jenna Ellis to a top Pence aide containing a detailed plan to overturn the election results. The plan entailed Pence returning the electoral results to six battleground states on January 6, with a deadline of January 15 for the states to return them. If any state did not return their electoral slate by that date, neither Trump nor Biden would hold a majority, so the election would be thrown to the House for a vote to determine the winner. Per the Constitution, in such a scenario the vote would be conducted on the basis of party control of state legislatures, with Republicans holding 26 of 50, presumably giving Trump the victory. Ellis drafted a second memo dated January 5 which she shared with Trump personal attorney, Jay Sekulow. The memo argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence's authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. She proposed that when Pence reached Arizona in the alphabetical order during the certification, he could declare the state's results as disputed and send all the electoral slates back to the states for "the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing." Sekulow did not agree that Pence had such authority.Plan to obtain National Security Agency data
In February 2022, ''The Washington Post'' obtained a memo of unknown provenance dated December 18, 2020 that had circulated among Trump allies and was shared with some Republican senators. The memo called for Trump to direct acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, Christopher Miller to obtain "National Security Agency, NSA unprocessed raw signals data" in an effort to prove foreign interference in the election. The proposal called for Miller to direct three men named in the document to acquire the data. At least two Republican senators received the memo after a January 4 meeting at the Trump International Hotel attended by at least three senators and others, which had been arranged by Mike Lindell. The meeting centered around voting machines and alleged interference by China, Venezuela and other countries. The three men involved were not close to Trump and their names had not been previously reported in efforts to subvert the election. Miller said he was not aware of the memo and Trump did not act on it.January 2021
On New Year's Day, White House director of personnel John McEntee (political aide), John McEntee sent a series of bullet points via text message to Pence's chief of staff to incorrectly assert that Thomas Jefferson "Used His Position as VP to Win" the 1801 election, which McEntee claimed "proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process." Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief White House correspondent for the duration of the Trump administration, wrote a November 2021 profile of McEntee, characterizing him as particularly powerful because "Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted." Trump reportedly reached out to Steve Bannon for advice on his quest to overturn the election results. In early January, Bannon, John C. Eastman, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were operating what they called a "war room" or "command center" at the Willard InterContinental Washington, Willard Hotel near the White House with the goal of overturning the election results. Christina Bobb of the pro-Trump One America News was also a participant. Further related details of the effort to deny and overturn the election were also reported. Justice Department officials pressured Atlanta's top federal prosecutor, B. J. Pak, to say there had been widespread voter fraud in Georgia, warning him that he would be fired if he did not. The White House forced Pak to resign on January 4, 2021. On January 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took place to Electoral Count Act, count the electoral votes. Normally a ceremonial formality, the session was interrupted by a mob that 2021 United States Capitol attack, attacked the Capitol. As Congress convened to certify the results, Trump held a rally on the Ellipse. He then encouraged his supporters to march to the United States Capitol, Capitol building, which they attacked. Five lawyers who represented Trump resigned in January 2021 after claiming he coerced them to repeat false claims of voter fraud.''Gohmert v. Pence''
On December 27, 2020, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and the slate of Republican presidential electors for Arizona filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to force him to decide the election outcome. Gohmert argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, that the Constitution gave Vice President Pence the "sole" power to decide the election outcome, and that Pence had the power to "count elector votes certified by a state's executive," select "a competing slate of duly qualified electors," or "ignore all electors from a certain state." Pence, represented by the Justice Department, moved to dismiss the case, since Congress, and not the vice president, was a more suitable defendant. The Justice Department also argued that "the Vice Presidentthe only defendant in this caseis ironically the very person whose power [plaintiffs] seek to promote. A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction." Lawyers for Congress also supported Pence's position. On January 1, 2021, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle dismissed the suit saying that due to the plaintiffs' Standing (law), lack of standing, the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction relating to the constitutional status of the Electoral Count Act. On appeal, the next day, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed Gohmert's appeal in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel.Calls with state officials
On January 2, 2021, Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others held a conference call with 300 legislators of key states to provide them purported evidence of election fraud to justify calling special sessions of their legislatures in an attempt to decertify their electors. Three days later, dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence to ask he delay the January 6 final certification of electors for ten days to allow legislators the opportunity to reconsider their states' certifications. That same day, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump was joined by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott Jr., law professor John C. Eastman, John Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. Raffensperger recorded the call, reportedly doing so while recalling his November 13 call with Trump ally and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, after which Graham made public statements about the discussion that were at odds with Raffensperger's recollection. In the call with Raffensperger, Trump repeatedly referred to disproven claims of election fraud and urged Raffensperger to overturn the election, saying "I just want to find 11,780 votes." Raffensperger refused, noting that Georgia had certified its results after counting the votes three times, and said at one point in the conversation, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong." Trump issued a vague threat suggesting that Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany might be subject to criminal liability. After the Georgia call, Trump and his team spoke on Zoom (software), Zoom with officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Raffensperger told his advisers that he did not wish a recording or a transcript to be made public unless Trump made false claims about the conversation or attacked Georgia officials. On the morning of January 3, Trump tweeted that Raffensperger "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions" about various election-related conspiracy theories endorsed by Trump. Raffensperger replied by tweet, "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." Later that day, ''The Washington Post'' reported on the call and published the full audio and transcript. (The Associated Press also obtained the recording.) Two months later, it was revealed that Trump had also called Raffensperger's chief investigator, Frances Watson, on December 23. He spoke to her for six minutes, during which he told her: "When the right answer comes out, you'll be praised." Legal experts stated that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct." Democrats condemned Trump's conduct. Vice President-elect Harris, as well as Representative Adam Schiff, (the House manager, chief prosecutor at First impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Trump's first impeachment trial) said that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger was an abuse of power. Dick Durbin, the second highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, called for a criminal investigation. On January 4, 2021, Democratic Representatives Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Christopher Wray asking him to open a criminal investigation of the incident, writing that they believed Trump had solicited, or conspired to commit, "a number of election crimes." More than 90 House Democrats supported a formal Censure in the United States, censure resolution, introduced by Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, to "censure and condemn" Trump for having "misused the power of his office by threatening an elected official with vague criminal consequences if he failed to pursue the president's false claims" and for attempting "to willfully deprive the citizens of Georgia of a fair and impartial election process in direct contravention" of state and federal law. Some congressional Democrats called Trump's conduct an impeachable offense. In February 2021, Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened a criminal investigation into the phone call along with the phone call made by Lindsey Graham. In January 2022, a panel of Fulton County judges agreed to Willis's request to impanel a Grand juries in the United States#Special grand jury, special grand jury to compel testimony from individuals who had refused to cooperate. Several House and Senate Republicans also condemned Trump's conduct, although no Republican described the conduct as criminal or an impeachable offense. Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who is not seeking reelection in 2022, called it a "new low in this whole futile and sorry episode", and commended "Republican election officials across the country who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign." Other congressional Republicans ignored or sought to defend Trump's Georgia call, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California politician), Kevin McCarthy and Georgia Senator David Perdue, who told Fox News in an interview that he thinks releasing the tape of the call was "disgusting."Justice Department pressured and efforts made to replace acting attorney general
The day after Attorney GeneralPreparations by chief of staff
During the days leading up to January 6, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent messages in support of preparing alternate Republican electors to replace those in some states in which Biden might win. He also claimed in an email that the National Guard (United States), National Guard would be ready to "protect pro Trump people". Additionally, a PowerPoint presentation on how the election could be overturned was sent by email to Meadows on January 5. The presentation, circulated by retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron and apparently inspired by the ideas of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, alleged foreign interference in the election and recommended that the president declare a national emergency to delay the certification, that Pence provide alternate electors, and that the military count votes. When Meadows was subpoenaed in September 2021 by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, he provided the document to the Committee and stated that he had not acted on the plan it described. Of the broader context, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on December 15: "There were 20, 30 people who knew about it and were close to going through with it."More pressure on Pence
In early January 2021, Trump and his supporters continued to pressure Pence into aiding their attempts to overturn election results during the January 6 certification. In early January, Trump criticized Pence for being "too honest" and warned him that people would "hate" him and believe he was "stupid". On January 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent a memo to Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, titled "Jefferson used his position as VP to win", suggesting that Pence could emulate Thomas Jefferson by taking the actions encouraged by Trump and his supporters. On January 2 in an appearance on Fox News, Trump aide Peter Navarro claimed that Pence had authority to delay election certification and to require an audit of the states' election results. Navarro, a promoter of the Green Bay Sweep (politics), Green Bay Sweep, was intimately involved with the election-overturn effort. His remarks elicited a public response from the Vice President’s office. On January 3, Eastman memos author John Eastman briefed Marc Short and vice presidential counsel Gregory Jacob, Greg Jacob on the arguments he had been presenting to Trump about the Vice President’s certification role. On January 4, Trump tweeted, "the Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors. Later that day, Trump told an audience of thousands at a January 4 rally in Georgia, "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us … Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much". On January 4 and 5, Trump met with Pence at the White House several times, attempting to persuade Pence to act as recommended by the Eastman memos; Eastman was present for at least one of the meetings. Also on January 5—following a January 2 call between Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and about 300 state legislators—several dozen of those legislators from five key states wrote to Pence and requested a 10-day delay of certification to allow reconsideration of the electoral results previously certified by those state legislatures. Also on January 5, Eastman communicated with Jacob. That day, Jacob wrote a memo to Pence stating that Eastman's plan would violate multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act and would assuredly be blocked in court, or if not considered by a court, would create an unprecedented political crisis and "the Vice President would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress...with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse." On January 5 or the early morning of January 6, after hearing from Pence and that he did not agree that the Vice President’s power extended to actions that would change election results, Trump issued a statement falsely claiming that Pence was "in total agreement” with his contention that “the Vice President has the power to act". On January 6 in the morning, Trump called Pence and again attempted to secure his cooperation. Trump reportedly told Pence, “You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy.” On January 6 at the rally preceding the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Trump said, "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election", "Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country", and “All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president …”. Other speakers at the January 6 rally, notably Giuliani and Eastman, also highlighted the actions being requested of Pence. After the rally, during the 2021 United States Capitol attack, rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and displayed a gallows complete with a hanging noose. During the Capitol attack on January 6, Eastman emailed Jacob, who was with Pence in the Capitol, saying that the siege was occurring "because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary." Also during the January 6 Capitol attack and resulting interruption of the certification process, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” The certification process was Timeline of the 2021 United States Capitol attack, interrupted for about 5 hours and 53 minutes (from 2:13 p.m. to 8:06 p.m.) In a meeting arranged by Senior presidential advisor Jared Kushner, Trump and Pence met each other on January 11 for the purpose of reconciliation.January 6 joint session
Senate efforts
In December 2020, several Republican members of the House, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, as well as Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, declared that they would formally object to the counting of the electoral votes of five swing states won by Biden during the January 6, 2021, joint session. The objections would then trigger votes from both houses. At least 140 House Republicans reportedly planned to vote against the counting of electoral votes, despite the lack of any credible allegation of an irregularity that would have impacted the election, and the allegations' rejections by courts, election officials, the Electoral College and others, and despite the fact that almost all of the Republican objectors had "just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on December 15 had acknowledged Biden's victory the day after the Electoral College vote, privately urged his Republican Senate colleagues not to join efforts by some House Republicans to challenge the vote count, but he was unable to persuade Hawley not to lodge an objection. Hawley used his objection stance in fundraising emails. Eleven Republican senators and senators-electHouse votes
At the January 6 session, after Republican senators had raised objections to Biden's electoral victory, the House debated and voted. A majority of Republicans, totaling 139 and including Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and his deputy Steve Scalise, voted to support at least one objection.Report by Representative Zoe Lofgren
At the end of February 2021, Representative Zoe Lofgren released a nearly 2,000-page report that examined the social media posts of Republican leaders who had voted against certifying the election results. The report focused on their posts before the November election and after the January 6 riot.Capitol attack
It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful ... I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election.
Trump operatives breach Coffee County, Georgia election system
On January 7, 2021, with help from local tech company SullivanStrickler, Trump supporters copied data from an election office in Coffee County, Georgia. Surveillance video shows someone who had posed as a fake elector escorting two Trump operatives into the Coffee County election office earlier that day. The would-be fake elector had communicated with the elections supervisor about office access. The two Trump operatives later admitted that Sidney Powell had sent them and that they had accessed a voting machine inside the building. The would-be fake elector invoked the Fifth Amendment. In 2022, SullivanStrickler was subpoenaed by the special grand jury convened by Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia.Lindell memo
On January 15, Trump ally and My Pillow, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell visited the White House, where he was photographed carrying notes that appeared to suggest an additional attempt to overturn the election. The document bore a heading containing the words "taken immediately to save ... Constitution" and called for 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (United States), 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber) civilian lawyer "Frank Colon NOW as Acting National Security [''illegible'']", and mentioned the "Insurrection Act" and "martial law". It further recommended "[m]ov ngKash Patel to CIA Acting" and made reference to Trump loyalist Sidney Powell.Later developments
Security concerns over March 4, 2021
Starting in late January, QAnon adherents began expressing their beliefs that Trump would be re-inaugurated as the 19th President on March 4, the original date for presidential inaugurations until the passage of the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Twentieth Amendment in 1933. This belief was adopted from a false aspect of Sovereign citizen movement, sovereign citizen ideology that asserts there has not been a "legitimate" U.S. president since Ulysses S. Grant (whose First inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant, first inauguration occurred on March 4, 1869) due to District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, an 1871 law that supposedly turned the U.S. into a corporation. In February, it was reported that National Guard troops were expected to remain in Washington, D.C., through March 12 due to concerns over possible activity by QAnon adherents on March 4. On March 2, it was reported that security measures were being added in Washington, D.C., in preparation for possible events on March 4. Despite these reports, the Capitol Police had advised lawmakers earlier that week that there was no indication of any protests or acts of violence in Washington, D.C., being planned. However, based on new intelligence that an identified but undisclosed militia group might attempt an attack on the Capitol building from that date to March 6, the agency issued an updated alert on March 3. House leadership subsequently rescheduled a March 4 vote to the previous night to allow lawmakers to leave town, though it later said the reschedule was not done out of security concerns. Meanwhile, the Senate did not follow suit, and it continued debating on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as planned. In addition to the Capitol Police advisory, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin, featuring similar warnings of possible violence on March 4, to state and local law enforcement agencies across the U.S. on the previous day. TheElection audits
Alleging fraud, during 2021 Republicans initiated or proposed audits in several states. An 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, audit in Maricopa County, Arizona that began in April inspired Republicans in other states to pursue similar efforts, with some calling for audits in all fifty states. More than a year after the election, Trump supporters continued to pressure state election officials to investigate or decertify the outcome, even in states where Trump won by a large margin. An Associated Press analysis published in December 2021 examined every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump had challenged. The analysis found 473 potential incidents. Even if all the incidents involved votes for Biden, which they did not, and involved ballots that were actually counted, which they did not, the number was far smaller than would have been necessary to change the election outcome. The analysis found no evidence of organized fraud but rather in virtually every case it involved an individual acting alone.Arizona
On March 31, 2021, the Arizona Senate Republican caucus hired four firms to perform an 2020 United States presidential election in Arizona#Audit ordered by Arizona Senate Republicans, audit of the presidential ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, Maricopa County, with a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas being the lead firm. There was no stated purpose of overturning the election, and there is no mechanism under the United States Constitution, Constitution by which the Congressional certification of the result could be reversed. Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said that the audit was not intended to overturn the state's election results, including at a July 15 hearing. Nevertheless, Trump and some of his supporters expressed the hope that the Arizona result would be changed and that there might be a "domino effect" in which other states changed their results. The auditors released a report on September 24, 2021, finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes. Following the audit, Governor of Arizona, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey rejected calls for the state's election to be decertified or overturned. In January 2022, Maricopa County election officials released a final report finding nearly every claim the auditors made was false or misleading. The next day, Cyber Ninjas announced it was shutting down, as a Maricopa County judge imposed a $50,000 contempt fine on the company for every day it refused to hand over documents as it had been ordered to do months earlier.Georgia
A group called VoterGA filed a lawsuit requesting to examine by microscope 150,000 Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County ballots that it asserted might be counterfeit. The suit arose after four Republican auditors involved with the 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia#Statewide audit and recount, November 2020 statewide audit and manual recount claimed to see what they asserted were "pristine" absentee ballots which they suspected might have been computer-generated, though an October 2021 investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found that there were no counterfeit ballots in the batches named by the complainants. After an initial ruling in favor of the suit by a superior court judge in May 2021, it was ultimately dismissed in October because the plaintiffs "failed to allege a particularized injury." The dismissal of the suit marked the end of the last remaining lawsuit challenging the Georgia election results until another suit making largely the same argument was subsequently filed. In December 2021, that suit was joined by David Perdue, who had announced his candidacy for Georgia governor days earlier. Perdue lost his bid to be reelected as a United States senator in 2020 and asserted that he, like Trump, had been cheated. Trump had claimed that about 5,000 dead people had voted in Georgia, but an examination by the State Election Board released in December 2021 found that four absentee ballots of dead people had been mailed in by relatives.Idaho
In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho announced it would perform a recount of ballots cast in the election, in response to an allegation by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that all 44 Idaho counties had been digitally hacked. Lindell provided a detailed list of IP addresses he asserted had been compromised. County Clerk Mike Rosedale stated that all county voting machines were fully Air gap (networking), airgapped from the Internet, also noting that seven Idaho counties don't use voting machines. Lindell alleged that a specific formula had been applied by hackers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Rosedale said Lindell had not contacted his office before presenting his allegations. Trump carried Bonner County with 67.2% of the vote and Idaho with 63.9% in the 2020 election. The Bonner audit, and audits of two other counties that don't use voting machines, affirmed the accuracy of the ballot count. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said Lindell would be sent a bill for the audits.Pennsylvania
By August 2021, Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers were preparing to hold formal hearings on the election and conduct a "full forensic investigation." Prior to the investigation, President pro tempore of the Pennsylvania Senate, Senate President Jake Corman made a statement asserting that the investigation is not meant to overturn the results of Pennsylvania's election and that the legislature does not have the authority to do so. The next month, Republicans approved subpoenas for a wide range of personal information on millions of voters who cast votes in the May primary and November general election. Republicans intended to hire private firms to manage the data. On September 23, 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit seeking to block the subpoenas from being issued. On October 7, 2021, Corman said that he accepted the results of the election but also reaffirmed his support for the investigation.Texas
The Texas attorney general's office, led by ardent Trump ally Ken Paxton, spent more than 22,000 staff hours investigating potential voting fraud in 2020. The investigation identified and prosecuted sixteen cases of false addresses on voter registration forms, among nearly 17 million registered voters in the state. This was half as many cases as two years earlier. A 2021 investigation found only three prosecutable cases among all elections in the state. In September 2021, hours after Trump wrote to Texas governor Greg Abbott demanding an audit of the state's election results, the Secretary of State of Texas, Texas secretary of state's office announced that audits had begun in four major counties. County officials and others in the secretary of state's office initially said they were unaware of any audit underway. Trump won Texas with 52.1% of the vote, though Biden and Texan Lyndon Johnson were the only Democrats to win Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County since 1952; Trump won the county by nine points in 2016. The audits were conducted by secretary of state John B. Scott (Texas politician), John Scott, whom Abbott appointed in October 2021. Scott is a former state litigator who briefly joined Trump's legal team in 2020 to challenge the election results. He released preliminary findings of the audits in December 2021 that found few issues, including 17 votes cast by deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes among 3.9 million ballots cast. The duplicate votes remained under investigation.Wisconsin
By May 2021, state election officials had identified 27 potential cases of voting fraud among 3.3 million ballots cast. Sixteen of those cases involved people using a UPS Store rather than their residence for their mailing address. Trump and his allies filed multiple lawsuits challenging Wisconsin election results but lost all of them, including a series of decisions by the state Supreme Court. State Republicans initiated multiple types of investigations beginning in February 2021. That month, the Republican majority legislature voted to direct the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an examination of some election procedures. In May 2021, Robin Vos, the Republican Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Wisconsin state assembly, hired three retired police officers and an attorney to examine reported tips of potential election irregularities. Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the Assembly elections committee, opened a "forensic audit" modeled after the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, Maricopa County, Arizona audit. She had traveled to Arizona to review that audit. Brandtjen issued subpoenas to two major counties for ballots and voting machines, but they were rejected because Vos had not signed them, as required by law. Vos indicated he did not intend to sign the subpoenas, which requested information that doesn't exist or doesn't apply to Wisconsin elections. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson asserted the subpoena he received was "clearly a cut and paste job" from similar election-related legal moves by Republicans in other states. In June 2021, Vos selected Republican former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman to conduct an investigation of the election. Gableman had been considered for a position in the Trump administration in 2017. Soon after the election, Gableman had voiced conspiracy theories about the outcome and had attended an August conference hosted by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. He also consulted Shiva Ayyadurai, a conspiracy theorist whose work on the Arizona audit was discredited. Gableman issued subpoenas, later withdrawn, some of which contained errors and requested information that was already public. He later stated, "Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work." Gableman sent emails to election officials across the state asking them to retain information, but they came from a Gmail account associated with a different name and in some cases were blocked as a security concern or spam. Gableman compared a newspaper's coverage of his investigation to Nazi propaganda. In October, the office of Democrat Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul sent Gableman a nine-page letter characterizing the investigation as unlawful and called for it to be closed. On October 22, 2021, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau released their findings of an audit ordered by Republicans in February 2021. The findings reported that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that Wisconsin Senate, State Senator Robert Cowles said that the election was "safe and secure". State Senator Kathy Bernier said that the audit found no evidence of any "attempt at vote fraud". A ten-month review by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found in December 2021 that certain election procedures weren’t adequately followed, but there was "little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud."Mike Lindell reinstatement prediction
On March 29, 2021, businessman and Trump supporter Mike Lindell predicted that Trump would "be back in office in August" in a video released by Right Wing Watch. Lindell more specifically predicted that Trump would be reinstated on the morning of August 13, the day after his three-day cyber fraud conference in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sioux Falls, stating "it'll be the talk of the world". When President Joe Biden remained in office, Lindell moved his prediction for Trump's return to September 30, and then to the end of 2021.Senate Judiciary Committee report
On October 7, 2021, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary published their report on Trump's efforts to pressure thePost-election voter restriction efforts by Republicans
Impact on secretaries of state
In multiple U.S. states, officials who work for the secretary of state received threats following the election and were still receiving threats as of October 2021. Law enforcement generally was not prepared to provide ongoing security for these officials, as their positions had never before been considered high-risk.House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack
In July 2021, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was formed, largely along party lines. The select committee has considered formally recommending that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Donald Trump for his activities on January 6, though the United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Justice Department is already investigating. At the first public hearing on June 9, 2022, the committee said that Trump had engaged in a United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack public hearings#7PartPlan, seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election, and they discussed it in the hearings that followed. According to Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee: “Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government ... The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.” Trump, according to the committee, "lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president." On October 21, 2022, the committee subpoenaed Trump's testimony and relevant records.2021 German federal election
During the 2021 German federal election, the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) found that false claims of voter fraud had become commonplace on Telegram (software), Telegram in Germany, with accusations against Dominion Voting Systems being common despite the company's technology not being used in German elections. CeMAS researcher Miro Dittrich said, "We have seen far-right actors try to claim election fraud since at least 2016, but it didn't take off. When Trump started telling the 'Justice Department investigations
By March 2022, Justice Department investigations of participants in the Capitol attack had expanded to include activities of Trump's inner circle leading up to the attack. A federal grand jury was empaneled that issued at least one subpoena seeking records about people who organized, spoke at, or provided security at Trump rallies, as well as information about members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rallies, or attempted to "obstruct, influence, impede or delay" the certification of the election.Civil lawsuits
In May 2022, a civil lawsuit was filed in Dane County, Wisconsin against the ten Trump supporters who had presented themselves as alternate electors for that state.Continuing subversion efforts
As of early April 2022, Trump has publicly continued to insist that the election was stolen. Around the same time, it was reported that Trump had admitted his loss to a group of historians in , saying, "We had a deal all set, and then when the election was rigged and lost, what happened is that the deal went away." ''The New York Times'' reported later in April 2022 that Trump supporters were continuing to seek ways to overturn the election. John Eastman, state and federal legislators, and right-wing news outlets continued to press for state legislatures to rescind electoral votes for Biden, and to bring new lawsuits asserting large-scale voting fraud. The ''Times'' reported that Trump was privately insisting he could be returned to power as he also continued to consider another run for the presidency in 2024. Legal experts expressed concerns that efforts were being made to undermine public confidence in democracy to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative attorney for whom Eastman clerked, remarked,At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy. Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.On May 1, 2022, investigations by the House Select Committee into fundraising efforts by the Republican National Committee, based on their promotion of Trump's "
Election law reform efforts
The controversies surrounding the election prompted calls to improve federal election laws. The Democratic led House of Representatives passed the For the People Act on March 3, 2019, but it was blocked from being heard in the Republican led Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The narrower Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act and Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act were announced by a bipartisan group of senators on July 20, 2022.Post-election allegations of statistical improbabilities
In the aftermath of the election, numerous claims were made and began to circulate, stating that serious anomalies could be found, suggesting an election fraud. However, a paper entitled "No Evidence For Voter Fraud: A Guide To Statistical Claims About The 2020 Election" written by Justin Grimmer, Haritz Garro and Andrew C. Eggers, was published by the conservative Hoover Institution (February 3, 2021) concluded that the statistics used to "claim some election facts would be unlikely if there had been no fraud" were either not accurate in the first place or if they were accurate, weren't really surprising.Reactions
At least eight sitting Republican Senators, members of the second Bush administration, and former members of the Trump administration condemned Trump's claims of fraud. A spokesperson for President-elect Biden called the effort a publicity stunt that would fail, a statement echoed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat of the committee with jurisdiction over federal elections. A bipartisan group of senators condemned the scheme to undo the election for Trump; Joe Manchin (D-WV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Warner (D-VA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Angus King (I-ME), Mitt Romney (R-UT), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said: "The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results." In a separate statement, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, denounced his Republican colleagues who had sought to overturn the election results, terming them "the institutional arsonist members of Congress" and called the submission of objection to counting the electoral votes a "dangerous ploy" by Republican members of Congress whoin seeking "a quick way to tap into the president's populist base"were pointing "a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government". Other prominent Republicans who spoke out against attempts to subvert the election results included Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House. Former Republican Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote in ''The Economist'' that "President Donald Trump's actions to destroy faith in our elections and throw centuries of American principles out the window must be met with universal condemnation from all political leaders, regardless of party." The ''New York Post'', which had promoted Trump's celebrity in New York since the 1980s and had twice endorsed his presidential candidacy, published a front-page editorial in December asking the president to "stop the insanity" and "end this dark charade," asserting that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup". The editorial continued: "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The ''Post'' characterized Trump attorney Sidney Powell as a "crazy person" and his former national security advisor Michael Flynn's suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason". The conservative editorial board of ''The Wall Street Journal'' published an editorial on December 20, 2020, titled "Trump's Bad Exit", writing: "As he leaves office he can't seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term" and "his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even on millions who voted for him." After the ''Wall Street Journal'' again published another editorial on October 24, 2021, it printed a response from Trump on October 27 in which Trump reiterated conspiracy theories about the election. The newspaper explained the next day that they had considered Trump's response newsworthy given that he is "an ex-President who may run in 2024...even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas". In 2011, Fox News created a "Monday Mornings with Trump" segment during which Trump would call in to ''Fox & Friends'' to offer his views on current affairs, and the hosts of that program continued to be supportive of Trump during his presidency. On January 4, 2021, host Ainsley Earhardt stated that many conservatives "feel like it was rigged," although host Steve Doocey responded: "That's the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven't really produced the evidence." Host Brian Kilmeade stated that he had another "worry" about "2021 United States Capitol attack, the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday [as Congress convened to certify the election results]. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn't work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats, in the big picture." All ten living former secretaries of defenseincluding Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gatespublished an essay on January 3, 2021, stating: "The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived." They also warned of grave consequences of any contemplated military involvement in the situation. The Chief Executive of the United States Chamber of Commerce commented that "[e]fforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results ... undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division", while almost 200 business leaders signed a statement from the Partnership for New York City declaring that such a move would "run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy". The National Association of Manufacturers called for Vice President Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and remove Trump from office. A former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz, acknowledging that she once "worked for him and...believed in him," told reporters that "the new Ted Cruz, post-Trump, is one I don't recognize...his actions directly played into the hands of the mob." During the riot, a Cumulus Media executive told its radio hosts that they must stop spreading the idea of election fraud. The memo said the election was over and that "there are no alternate acceptable 'paths’," and thus the radio hosts must immediately "help induce national calm". According to a ''Washington Post'' assessment, Trump's falsehoods about fraud cost taxpayers more than half a billion dollars in spending to enhance security, resolve legal disputes and repair property, among other things. Drawing on the false allegations of voting fraud and a stolen election, in early 2021 Republican state legislatures began to Republican efforts to make voting laws more restrictive following the 2020 presidential election, implement new laws and rules to restrict voting access in ways that would benefit Republican candidates. On December 17, 2021, ''The Washington Post'' reported the need to be prepared for a possible insurrection in 2024, according to several retired generals. On December 23, 2021, American legal scholar Laurence Tribe along with his colleagues wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland ought to be "holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrectionall of themto account" to "teach the next generation that no one is above the law." In June 2022, Ivanka Trump told the panel of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that she does not believe the election was stolen and accepted William Barr's conclusion that voter fraud claims have "zero basis".Description as attempted coup before the Capitol attack
Multiple media outlets characterized the efforts as an attempted coup. In addition, cable news political commentators for MSNBC and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough cited the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia article "Description as attempted coup during or after the Capitol attack
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) described the event as a coup attempt. New York Attorney General Letitia James similarly described the event as a coup attempt. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) described the events as an "insurrection", language also echoed by President-elect Biden. House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy initially spoke against Trump's schemes but then changed his position. Before the attack, he spoke to Trump, advising him that attempts to object to the election results were "doomed to fail". During the attack, he implored Trump to intervene. Six days after the attack, he said in a radio interview that he supported a bipartisan commission and grand jury to investigate and that Trump "told me personally that he does have some responsibility." The next day, he stated on the House floor that Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters." However, after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on January 28, 2021, the tone of McCarthy's public comments "changed markedly". McCarthy ultimately opposed the formation of a bipartisan January 6 commission and the House committee. In Winter 2021, Professor Inderjeet Parmar wrote: "That it was a coup attempt is in no doubtit was openly declared as an attempt to reverse the results of a democratic election." In January 2022, Yale history professor Timothy D. Snyder described January 6 as a "failed coup" and "practice for a successful coup". He expressed fear that legal steps are being taken so that Trump can be "installed" as president, leading to unprecedented violence "next time around". On March 28, 2022, United States district court Judge David O. Carter ordered Attorney John C. Eastman, John Eastman to hand over documents to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, house select committee. In the court's opinion, Judge Carter wrote that Eastman and Trump's campaign was "a coup in search of a legal theory". Later that day, US Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, House January 6th committee, read the relevant paragraph of Judge Carter's opinion into the committee record. On April 7, 2022, Professor David Pion-Berlin and co-authors described these events as a self coup by President Trump. On June 6, 2022, Brookings Institution scholars Norm Eisen, Norman Eisen, Donald B. Ayer, Donald Ayer, and three co-authors released their report "''Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality''", which they open by summarizing Trump's action as "nothing less than an attempted coup". In a 2022 anthology of essays written by historians, philosophers, and political scientists, Michael Harvey, Dean and Provost of Washington College, compared the capitol attack to Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, describing Trump's actions as a "self-coup"."Trump won" and "big lie"
"Trump won" is a political slogan adopted by Trump supporters who, contrary to the election results, believe that Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These claims were described by former US Attorney GeneralBeliefs of Trump supporters
Many Trump supporters still believed Trump won long after President Biden was sworn in. As of May 2021, an Ipsos/Reuters survey reported that 53% of Republican-identifying respondents believed that Trump was still the legitimate President of the United States. , some still believed that Trump will be restored to power by some extraordinary process, possibly later in 2021. These beliefs have led to calls for violence on social media, sparking concerns from the United States Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security about violence by right-wing extremists in mid-2021. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted on November 15–17, 2020, found nearly all Trump supporters (88%) asserting that Biden's election was illegitimate, that mail-in ballots were manipulated to favor Biden (91%), that votes had been cast by immigrants who were not eligible to vote (89%), and that there was voter fraud more generally (89%). According to a poll by CNBC/Change Research conducted on November 16–19, only 3% of Trump supporters stated that Biden's victory was legitimate. 73% of Trump voters considered Trump the winner of the election, 66% of them stated that Trump should never concede the election, and 31% said Trump should fight the results until the states certified the results. In ''Politico''/Morning Consult polls conducted in June 2021 with registered Republican voters, 51% expected an election audit in Arizona to reveal significant problems that could imply that Trump had been the true winner, while 29% expected audits like this to restore Trump to the presidency. The Arizona vote audit report drew the opposite conclusion: in September 2021 it showed that Trump had 261 fewer votes than had been counted whilst Biden had 99 more votes. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in August–September 2021 found that Republicans' enthusiasm for voting in future elections correlated with believing that "Trump won" and with holding that belief as central to their identity as Republicans. According to a recent poll, 61% of Republicans still believe Biden won in 2020 due to "voter fraud", NBC News reported on September 27, 2022.See also
* Criminal proceedings in the January 6 United States Capitol attack * Democratic backsliding in the United States * Pre-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election * 1776 ReturnsNotes
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