Trump’s drumbeat of lies about the 2020 election keeps getting louder. Here are the facts

With Donald Trump dealing with felony fees over his makes an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories about his defeat.

It is half of a multiyear effort to undermine public confidence in the American electoral course of as he seeks to chart a return to the White Home in 2024. There’s proof that his lies are resonating: New polling from The Related Press-NORC Middle for Public Affairs Analysis reveals that 57% of Republicans consider Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president.

Here are the facts about Trump’s loss in the final presidential election:

REVIEWS AND RECOUNTS CONFIRM BIDEN’S VICTORY

Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was not notably shut. He received the Electoral School with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the well-liked vote by greater than 7 million ballots.

As a result of the Electoral School in the end determines the presidency, the race was determined by a number of battleground states. Many of these states carried out recounts or thorough opinions of the outcomes, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory.

In Arizona, a six-month assessment of ballots in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, that was commissioned by Republican state legislators not solely affirmed Biden’s victory however decided that he ought to have received by 306 extra votes than the formally licensed statewide margin of 10,457.

In Georgia, the place Trump was not too long ago indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 end result there, state officers led by each a Republican governor and secretary of state recertified Biden’s win after conducting three statewide counts. The ultimate official recount narrowed Biden’s victory in the state from simply shy of 13,000 votes to simply shy of 12,000 votes.

In Michigan, a committee led by Republican state senators concluded there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the state in 2020 after conducting a monthslong investigation. Michigan, the place Biden defeated Trump by nearly 155,000 votes, or 2.8 proportion factors, was much less aggressive in contrast with different battleground states, though the end in Wayne County, residence of Detroit, was focused by Trump and his supporters with unfounded voter fraud claims, as had been key city jurisdictions throughout the nation.

In Nevada, the then-secretary of state, Republican Barbara Cegavske, and her workplace reviewed tens of 1000’s of allegations of doable voter fraud recognized by the Nevada Republican Get together however discovered that the majority had been based mostly on incomplete data and a scarcity of understanding of the state’s voting and registration procedures. For instance, Cegavske’s investigation discovered that of 1,506 alleged situations of ballots being forged in the identify of deceased people, solely 10 warranted additional investigation by regulation enforcement. Equally, 10 out of 1,778 allegations of double-voting referred to as for additional investigation. Biden received Nevada by 33,596 votes, or 2.4 proportion factors.

In Pennsylvania, the ultimate licensed outcomes had Biden with an 80,555-vote margin over Trump, or 1.2 proportion factors. Efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s election failed in state and federal courts, whereas no prosecutor, choose or election official in Pennsylvania has raised a priority about widespread fraud. State Republicans proceed to aim their very own assessment of the 2020 outcomes, however that effort has been tied up in the courts and Democrats have referred to as it a “partisan fishing expedition.”

In Wisconsin, a recount barely improved Biden’s victory over Trump by 87 votes, growing Biden’s statewide result in 20,682, or 0.6 proportion factors. A nonpartisan audit that concluded a yr after the election made suggestions on how one can enhance future elections in Wisconsin however didn’t uncover proof of widespread voter fraud in the state, main the Republican co-chair of the audit committee to declare that “ the election was largely secure and safe. ” The state’s Meeting speaker, a Republican, ordered a separate assessment, which a state choose mentioned discovered “ completely no proof of election fraud.”

AP INVESTIGATION FINDS MINIMAL VOTER FRAUD IN SWING STATES

An exhaustive AP investigation in 2021 discovered fewer than 475 situations of confirmed voter fraud throughout six battleground states — nowhere close to the magnitude required to sway the final result of the presidential election.

The assessment of ballots and information from greater than 300 native elections workplaces discovered that just about each occasion of voter fraud was dedicated by people performing alone and never the end result of a large, coordinated conspiracy to rig the election. The instances concerned each registered Democrats and Republicans, and the culprits had been nearly at all times caught earlier than the fraudulent poll was counted.

Some of the instances gave the impression to be intentional makes an attempt to commit fraud, whereas others appeared to contain both administrative error or voter confusion, together with the case of one Wisconsin man who forged a poll for Trump however mentioned he was unaware that he was ineligible to vote as a result of he was on parole for a felony conviction.

The AP assessment additionally produced no proof to help Trump’s claims that states tabulated extra votes than there are registered voters.

Biden received Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral School votes by a mixed 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots forged. The disputed ballots characterize simply 0.15% of his victory margin in these states.

TRUMP’S OWN ADMINISTRATION FOUND NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD

Trump was repeatedly suggested by members of his personal administration that there was no proof of widespread fraud.

9 days after the 2020 election, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company issued a press release saying, “ The November third election was the most safe in American historical past.” The assertion was co-written by the teams representing the high elections officers in each state.

Lower than three weeks later, then-Legal professional Basic William Barr declared {that a} Justice Division investigation had not uncovered proof of the widespread voter fraud that Trump had claimed was at the middle of a large conspiracy to steal the election. Barr, who had directed U.S. attorneys and FBI brokers throughout the nation to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, mentioned, “Thus far, we now have not seen fraud on a scale that might have effected a distinct final result in the election.”

The Jan. 6 Home committee report particulars extra situations the place administration officers and White Home employees refuted Trump’s numerous allegations of voter fraud.

COURTS HEARD TRUMP’S LEGAL CHALLENGES AND REJECTED THEM

The Trump marketing campaign and its backers pursued quite a few authorized challenges to the election in court docket and alleged a spread of voter fraud and misconduct. The instances had been heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at each state and federal ranges, together with by judges whom Trump appointed.

One of them, U.S. Circuit Decide Stephanos Bibas, was on a federal panel that declined a request to cease Pennsylvania from certifying its outcomes, saying, “Voters, not attorneys, select the president. Ballots, not briefs, resolve elections.”

The U.S. Supreme Court docket additionally rejected a number of efforts in the weeks after Election Day to overturn the election ends in numerous battleground states that Biden received.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT VOTING MACHINES WERE UNFOUNDED

Many of the claims Trump and his crew superior about a stolen election handled the tools voters used to forged their ballots.

At numerous instances, Trump and his authorized crew falsely alleged that voting machines had been in-built Venezuela at the course of President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013; that machines had been designed to delete or flip votes forged for Trump; and that the U.S. Military had seized a pc server in Germany that held secrets and techniques to U.S. voting irregularities.

None of these claims was ever substantiated or corroborated. CISA’s joint assertion launched after the election mentioned, “There isn’t any proof that any voting system deleted or misplaced votes, modified votes or was in any approach compromised.”

Nonetheless, many of these and different unfounded claims had been repeated on Fox Information, each by members of the Trump crew in addition to by some of the community’s on-air personalities. Dominion Voting Programs sued the community for $1.6 billion, claiming the outlet’s airing of these allegations amounted to defamation.

Information of inner communications at Fox Information unearthed in the case confirmed that the community aired the claims regardless that its largest stars, together with Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, in addition to the firm’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, didn’t consider they had been true.

Dominion and Fox Information settled out of court docket for $787.5 million.

CLAIMS INVOLVING SUITCASES AND BALLOT MULES ARE DEBUNKED

Trump and his supporters even have claimed {that a} quantity of different elements contributed to a broader effort to steal the presidential election.

One idea superior by each Trump and one of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, is that “suitcases” full of fraudulent ballots in Georgia value Trump the election there.

Then-Deputy Legal professional Basic Jeffrey Rosen informed the Jan. 6 Home committee that he personally reviewed the video purported to indicate the fraud allegation in query. He recounted telling Trump: “It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use after they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.”

State and county officers additionally had confirmed the containers had been common poll containers on wheels, which are utilized in regular poll processing.

However per week later, Trump publicly repeated the suitcase idea, saying, “There’s even safety digital camera footage from Georgia that reveals officers telling ballot watchers to depart the room earlier than pulling suitcases of ballots out from below the tables and persevering with to rely for hours.”

Richard Donoghue, the former performing deputy legal professional normal, informed the Jan. 6 committee that, days later, he informed Trump that “these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run by means of the machine a number of instances, it was not true. … We checked out the video, we interviewed the witnesses.” However Trump continued to repeat the false declare.

One other debunked declare spinning a story of 2,000 so-called poll mules was featured in a movie that ran in a whole bunch of theaters final spring. The movie alleges that Democrat-aligned people had been paid to illegally gather and drop ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. However the AP decided that the allegations had been based mostly on flawed evaluation of cellphone location information and drop field surveillance footage.

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Related Press writers Scott Bauer and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.