Who Stole or Attempted To Steal the Election of 2020? Republicans or Democrats?

The following is an undeniable fact:

Either the Democrats stole the 2020 election, or the Republicans tried to steal the 2020 election.

Either way, something very bad took place.

But which was it? As it turns out, we do know the truth about which of those is correct.

Do you want to know the truth? Because it’s available to you at this point. You need only ask.

We all have strong feelings about our political views. It quickly becomes ‘us’ vs ‘them’ with ‘us’ being the good guys and ‘them’ being the bad guys.

But, in this case, we need to find out what took place and take action to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And it needs to be the right actions.

In this post, I’ll explain what really happened in the 2020 election. And I’ll lay out the evidence so that you don’t have to take my word for it. Further, I’ll lay out the evidence using solely the point of view of insiders that were actually there, that knew the players involved, and actually had a chance to investigate — in real-time — the various claims of election fraud.

Who Knew The Truth?

How can we know the truth about what happened? In this case, we’re going to look at the testimony of actual insiders that were on the ground when the claims of election fraud were raised by Donald Trump. These insiders had a chance to investigate the claims while they were happening. This is an important point. Most of us just didn’t have the resources to investigate at the time.

The following stories are all taken from Woodward and Costa’s book Peril which describes what happened before and on January 6th, 2021. What makes this book interesting is that the journalists decided to tell the story from the point of view of Trump loyalists that were present when the claims of election fraud were raised and had the resources and motivation to research the fraud claims. All page references in this post come from this book.

The people we’ll be looking at are the following:

1. Bill Barr: William Barr was Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General that was a strong Trump loyalist. Trump convinced him to investigate the claims of election fraud over the objections of the rest of the Attorney General’s office and he had a chance to review the evidence of election fraud in detail.

2. Lindsey Graham and Lee Holmes: Graham is another Trump loyalist. Even after the events of January 6th, Graham remained a loyal supporter and friend of Donald Trump and encouraged him to make ‘the greatest comeback in American history.’ (p. 411)

3. Mike Lee: The Republican Senator from Utah, my home state. Mike Lee lives in the Republican Stronghold of the nation and faced intense pressure to investigate the claims of election fraud from his constituents.

4. Mike Pence: Mike Pence was the very loyal Vice President of Donald Trump that was asked to throw the election to the House of Representatives and investigated if he had the right or power to do so.

Bill Barr Investigates the Claims of Election Fraud

On November 23, Bill Barr received a phone call from Donald Trump insisting that the Attorney General’s Department investigate Trump’s claims of election fraud. According to Barr, Trump told him:

“…we won. We won by a lot. And, you know, it’s fraud. Bill, we can’t let them get away with this. This is stealing the election. I hear that you guys are hanging back. You’re not — somehow you don’t think it’s your role to look at this.”

Barr replied, “No, Mr. President, that’s not correct. … The Justice Department can’t take sides, as you know, between you and the other candidate. That’s what we have elections to decide. But if there’s a crime of sufficient magnitude, of specific and credible information indicating potential fraud on a scale that could affect the outcome, I’m willing to take a look. By the way, a lot of the people at Justice don’t think we should. And I’ve overruled that. And I said on a case-by-case basis, we will.” (p. 165–166)

Barr was in fact already investigating the claims of election fraud. Back on November 16, he and FBI Director Chris Wray had met with computer experts at both the FBI and Homeland Security to walk them through how the voting machines worked to see if the claims of fraud were credible. Trump then gave Barr some additional leads and Barr promised to investigate them.

Barr failed to find any evidence of wide-scale election fraud that would have affected the outcome of the election. He truthfully admitted this to the press, as was his job to do. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome of the election,” Barr told the Associated Press. (p. 169)

This led to a confrontation between the Attorney General and the President.

“‘Did you say this?’ the president asked…

“‘Yes.’

“‘Why?’

“‘Because it’s true. We haven’t seen it, Mr. President.’

“‘You didn’t have to say that. You could have just said no comment.’” (p. 169-170)

Barr, at this point, reminded the president that he had asked for this investigation and it was his choice to pursue this.

“‘During the weekend you were there saying that the Justice Department was ‘missing in action’ and that you knew the election was stolen. And… the reporter asked me what we’d found, and I told him what we found, which is, so far, nothing.’” (p. 170)

If you ask for an investigation, you have to accept the outcome of that investigation. You don’t get to only accept the outcome if it goes your way. That’s how investigations work. It was apparent that Trump did not realize this. In fact, he immediately went on to say to Barr:

“‘You must have said that because you hate Trump, you must really hate Trump.’ (p. 170)

Of course, this was absurd, so Barr calmly reminded Trump of the truth:

“‘No, Mr. President, I don’t hate you. I think you know that at some significant personal sacrifice to myself, I came in to help this administration and I’ve tried to serve it honorably.’” (p. 170)

Bill Barr Goes Over the Evidence of Claims of Election Fraud with Trump

Claim 1: The Voting Machines Miscounted

What followed was an interesting exchange where Trump listed his alleged evidence of election fraud and had a chance to find out what the investigation had found on each of his claims.

“‘You have wasted four weeks on the one theory that is demonstrably crazy, which is [fraud of] these [voting] machines.’ Barr said to Trump.

“‘Well, what do you mean?’

“‘Mr. President, the machines are like adding machines. They’re tabulators. If you take a stack of 20-dollar bills and you run them through a machine that counts them, it comes up and then it puts a band around every thousand dollars. Now guess what? The law requires that the actual ballots be saved, just like the banded money would be saved. So, if you say the machine hasn’t counted right, you just go to the money and see if that’s a thousand dollars.’” (p. 170)

In other words, if there was fraud, it would be incredibly easy to demonstrate. You just needed to show that there was a mismatch between what the machine said in one of the stacks and what was actually in the stack. This was as simple a matter of someone grabbing one of the banded stacks and showing “Hey, the machine banded $1000 dollars together but there are only $900 in this stack, so I was defrauded!”

Yet despite this, not a single such example had been found so far. Was it even credible that an entirely nationwide election had been stolen and not a single miscount from the machines could be physically produced?

“‘Show me where there’s been a miscount. And so far, every place has shown no discrepancy. This is crazy,’ said Barr. (p 170–171)

Claim 2: Detroit’s Sudden Change in Votes

Trump, having no way to dispute Barr on this, moved on to the next claim.

“‘How about the votes that came in in Detroit?’ Trump asked. ‘You know, I’m ahead by so many thousand. And then all these votes come out at four o’clock in the morning or whenever it was.’ His lead was wiped out.” (p. 171)

Now of course Bill Barr has also investigated this already.

“‘Mr. President, did you go and check that against what happened last time in 2016? You actually ran stronger this year than you did in Detroit last time. The margins were the same, except you ran better and Biden ran a little worse in Detroit.’” (p. 171)

In other words, the final numbers were actually better for Trump this year than in the election that Trump had won and not contested. This was nothing out of the ordinary and it was completely consistent with a non-fraudulent election. So this couldn’t be considered evidence of fraud.

Claim 3: The Flood of Boxes in Detroit

“‘Well, there were boxes,’ Trump said. ‘People saw the boxes,’ flooding in hours after the polls closed.” (p. 171)

Wasn’t that at least evidence of fraud? But again, Barr had already investigated this claim.

“‘Mr. President, there are 503 precincts in Detroit. In Michigan, it is the only country where the votes are not counted in the precincts. Every other county, they’re counted in the precincts. In Detroit, however, they go to a central counting station. And so, all night these boxes are being moved in. And so, the fact that boxes are going into the counting stations in the early morning hours is not suspicious. That’s what they do. The votes always come in at that time and the ratio of votes is the same as it was last time. There’s no indication of a sudden surge of extra Biden votes.’” (p. 171)

Again, Barr’s investigation had found that Trump's claim of fraud had been incorrect. There was no evidence of fraud here.

Claim 4: Fulton County, Georgia

Trump then asked Barr about the claims of fraud in Fulton County, Georgia. Again, Barr has already investigated the claim.

“‘We’re looking into that. But so far, the word is… that those were legitimate ballots. Mr. President, we’re looking into stuff, but these things aren’t panning out.’” (p. 171)

Mike Lee Investigates Trump’s Claims

Mike Lee, the Senator from Utah, found himself in an interesting pickle. He was hearing from people back home in Utah and they did not trust the election outcome. Utah has traditionally been the strongest red state in the nation. So many in Utah believed Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen. Lee’s friends, neighbors, and even family members were telling him they expected him to go back to Washington and ‘stop the steal.’ These weren’t fringe people, they were respected members of the community: mayors, city councilmen, county commissioners, and sheriffs. So he was under pressure to get in line with Trump’s claims and to formally object to the certification of the election. (p. 201–202)

But Mike Lee was also a strict constructionist when it came to the constitution and as far as he could see congress did not have the power under the constitution to simply throw out some of the electoral college. If congress really did have the power to do that, what was to stop the Democrats from doing it next time? It just didn’t make sense. But what if there was something to the claims of fraud he kept hearing about from his own constituents?

So Mike Lee decided to take this responsibility seriously and look into the claims of election fraud. He contacted Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, and asked for what was known. He knew that if there was any truth to the claims of fraud then there would be evidence. He just needed to get ahold of the evidence so he could see it for himself. (p. 203,209)

“‘Lee received a two-page memo from the White House on Saturday, January 2, authored by legal scholar John Eastman, who was working with Trump.’” (p. 209)

Claim 5: 7 States Had a Dual Slate of Electors

John Eastman’s memo claimed that 7 States had a dual slate of electors. Mike Lee was in shock. He’d never heard of anything about this before. Was this true? If so, that was a big deal. If so, then why hadn’t it hit the national news already? (p. 209)

But what Lee found was that Eastman’s claim was really nothing more than the fact that Trump had asked Republican state governors for special sessions of state legislatures in hopes that they would put together a second slate of electors. In fact, nothing of the kind had taken place and the Republican governors had rightly just ignored Trump’s requests. There were no dual slate of electors and this part of the Eastman memo seemed to be just a lie. (p. 210)

In fact, what Eastman apparently really meant was that Trump himself felt that there were problems in 7 states and intended to tell Vice President Mike Pence to simply not count those votes.

“Lee’s head was spinning. No such procedure existed in the Constitution, any law or past practice. Eastman had drawn it out of thin air.” (p. 211)

Lee decided to go directly to the 7 states that Eastman claimed had dual state electors and talk to them.

“Over the next 48 hours, Lee tracked down the phone numbers of elected officials in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and through third parties, he sought out information on Arizona.

“They all had Republican legislatures. He talked with their leaders. A Y.S. senator could get almost anyone on the phone. Lee made dozens of calls.

“Every single person he contacted told him the same: Not a chance you would get a majority in either statehouse of any of these states to say that the election had failed, or to decertify their slate of electors. Not one house chamber in any of these states. Lee soon grew tired of being told the same thing over and over.” (p. 227)

Lindsey Graham and Lee Holmes Research Giuliani’s Statistics

Lindsey Graham was a close friend of Donald Trump and one of his strongest supporters, even to this day. So he sincerely hoped that the claims that Biden had actually lost the election were true. He approached Trump’s people to find out what evidence they had.

“[Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and his team] said they had 789 dead people who had voted in Georgia.” (p. 214)

If this was true, that really was something. But Graham wanted didn’t want a statistic, he wanted to see actual names. In other words, he wanted to see the evidence for himself so he could research it.

“‘Give me some names. You need to put it in writing. You need to show me the evidence.’” (p. 214) Graham told them.

“They promised to get names to him…” (p. 214)

In the meantime, Giuliani’s team started to put out memos with many other claims of evidence of election fraud. They also claimed the numbers all came from publicly available records. Sometimes the number of alleged fraudulent votes numbers in the tens of thousands.

For example, “They said they had found 66,000 individuals under the age of 18 who illegal voted in Georgia.” (p. 214) But this number seemed suspect to Graham.

“Do you know how hard it is to get somebody who’s 18 to vote? You’ve got 66,000 under 18 who voted, right?” (p. 214)

“Right. [Giuliani’s team replied]” (p. 214)

If this was really true, and if it really did all come from public records, it should be trivial to get actual names as evidence that could be published.

So Graham asked his chief counsel, Lee Holmes, to look into the claims for him.

Claim 6: 789 Dead Voters voted in Georgia

Giuliani’s memo claimed that:

“Many independent interest groups have undertaken analyses to review the mail-in and absentee ballots that were reported by various Secretaries of State to determine if deceased voters had ballots requested cast and counted in their name. …

“They have identified 789 dead people who voted in Georgia in the 2020 General Election.” (p. 216)

“[But to] Holmes, it was not clear how anyone could get such a massive list of people who died and meaningfully match it to their recent voting history.” (p. 217)

But here was a list of 789 names, just like Graham has asked. So Holmes decided to research these names directly. But what he found was not encouraging.

“Robert Drakeford, for example, was 88 years old, and got a ballot on September 18. The ballot was returned five days later. He died on November 2, according to the document.” (p. 217)

In other words, nothing fraudulent had happened because Drakeford was alive at the time he cast his vote.

If you are going to claim that 789 dead people voted in Georgia, the natural assumption is that they were dead when they voted and thus the vote was fraudulent. Finding out that they instead died after legally casting their vote was the same as saying it was a completely legal vote and nothing was wrong.

Checking other examples found the same problem. As best as Holmes could tell, nearly all of the 789 dead people on the list had voted before dying. So even if the document was accurate, it only proved nothing fraudulent had taken place. (p. 217)

Claim 7: Other Claims from Giuliani

More memos came from Giuliani with thousands of additional claims of fraudulent votes. Most claimed to come from public records.

“…18,325 voters had ‘registered at a residential address which is marked vacant per the USPS…’” (p. 218)

But Holmes realized this claim didn’t even make sense. “How could anyone, or even a team of Ivy League statisticians, go through 7.6 million registered voters and correlate that with the postal records to find 18.325 registered at vacant addresses?” (p. 218)

Holmes checked the internet since the memo claimed these were all from public records. There simply was no such public information available.

The memo also claimed that 305,701 instances of “absentee ballot applications date precede earliest date permitted under Georgia law.” (p. 218)

But that would mean examining 7.6 million voter files… It would be a near-impossible task… (p. 218)

The claim that 4,502 unregistered voters casting ballots seemed off to Holmes too. “How could unregistered people cast a vote? And how would anyone find out?” (p. 219) Much less via public records?

The memo claimed “42,284 registered voters voted more than once” in Nevada (p. 219) “Holmes wondered how this was possible. In multiple precincts? The same precincts? Voting twice was clearly illegal, but who exactly would track and register that in what Giuliani said were public records?” (p. 219)

The memo went on to make claims like “‘2,468 voters had moved out of the state of Nevada 30 days prior to the election and were therefore ineligible to vote.’ And 1,506 were listed as ‘deceased by the Social Security Administration Death File…’ ‘8,111 voters had registered with non-existent addresses,’ the memo stated. ‘15,164 out-of-state voters voted.’”

Holmes could find no public records that would even allow someone to reach these conclusions. (p. 219–220)

An even more egregious example was “…a claim that there had been 11,676 overvotes in Arizona” (p. 220) turned out to count up every single overvote across even local races, to inflate the numbers and make them sound more impressive. But the memo was only claiming 180 overvotes for the presidential election. Holmes realized that, even if true, it wasn’t changing the outcome of the election. It wasn’t even worth looking into further.

Trump Pressures Pence to Steal the Election

Of particular interest to this story is the story of how Vice President Mike Pence was pressured by Donald Trump to steal the election. Pence himself told his own story of what Trump was ordering him to do:

“Pence explained [to former Vice President Dan Quayle]… that Trump was pressuring him to intervene to ensure Biden would not secure the needed 270 votes during the certification and push the election to a vote in the House of Representatives.

“If thrown to the House, there was a twist. And Trump was fixated on the twist, Pence said. … While the Democrats held the current House majority, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution stated the voting on a contested election would not be done by a simple majority vote. Instead, the amendment states that the election vote would be counted in blocs of state delegations, with one vote per state.” (p. 198)

Since Republicans controlled more delegations than Democrats, if this happened, Trump believed he’d win the election. Trump claimed that because the Constitution said the Vice President counted the electoral vote that he had the right to decide for himself which votes were valid even though this wasn’t stated in the Constitution. So, Trump wanted Pence to throw out votes in states that Trump and his team claimed had a second set of electors or where Trump was claiming fraud took place. This would get the electoral votes below the 270 required to win.

Quayle, when he had run the vote count back in 1993, had fully researched the procedure and knew that the Constitution did not allow the Vice President any leeway to throw votes out. If it did, then every election would be thrown to the House of Representatives. The constitutional duty of the Vice President was to count the votes brought to him and nothing else. He was a bean counter, not someone that got to decide which votes were valid. That was the state’s job.

“Quale believed… [Trump’s plan] could precipitate a constitutional crisis.

“‘Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,’ Quayle said.

“‘I know, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell Trump,’ Pence said. ‘But he really thinks he can. And there are other guys in there saying I’ve got this power. I’ve — ‘

“Quayle interrupted him.

“‘You don’t, just stop it,’ he said.” (p. 199)

Pence pushed on anyhow. Was there anything to Trump’s claims? Or would that just be an unconstitutional overreach of power?

“‘Forget it,’ Quayle repeated.

“Pence finally agreed acting to overturn the election would be antithetical to his traditional view of conservativism. One man could not effectively throw the election to the House of Representatives.

“Quayle told Pence to let it go.

“‘Mike, don’t even talk about it,’ he said.” (p. 199–200)

Trump Puts Intense Personal Pressure on Pence

Of course, Trump claimed that it was fair to steal the election from the electoral college in this way because, in Trump’s mind, he’d actually won the election. He was just stealing the election back, so to speak.

In a January 5 meeting, Trump insisted to Pence that he had the power to ‘throw Biden’s electors out…’ (p. 228)

“‘Make it fair. Take it back.’ Trump said, ‘That is all I want you to do, Mike,’ Trump said. ‘Let the House decide the election.’

“‘What do you think, Mike?’ Trump asked.

“Pence returned to his mantra: He did not have the authority to do anything other than count the electoral votes.

“‘Well, what if these people say you do?’ Trump asked, gesturing beyond the White House to the [Trump supporting] crowds outside.

“‘If these people say you had the power, wouldn’t you want to?’ Trump asked.

“‘I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,’ Pence said.

“‘But wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?’ Trump asked.

“‘No,’ Pence said. ‘Look, I’ve read this, and I don’t see a way to do it.’ …

“‘No, no no!’ Trump shouted.

“‘You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.’

“‘You’re not going to be sworn in on the 20th. There is not a scenario in which you can be sworn in on the 20th,’ Pence said. ‘We need to figure out how to deal with it…’

“Trump’s voice grew louder. You are weak. You lack courage. ‘You’ve betrayed us. I made you. You were nothing,’ Trump said. ‘You’re career is over if you do this.’ (p. 228–230)

On another occasion Pence reported this interchange:

“…Pence told Trump. ‘I told you I’d sleep on it, I’d take a look with my team. We’ll hear any objections and evidence. But when I go to the Capitol, I’ll do my job.’

“‘Mike, this is not right!’ Trump said, calling from the Oval Office. ‘Mike, you can do this. I’m counting on you to do it. If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago.’ …

“‘You’re going to wimp out!’ Trump said. His anger was visible to others in the Oval Office, including his daughter Ivanka.

“‘Mike Pence is a good man,’ Ivanka Trump said to [loyal Trump supporter, Keith] Kellogg.

“I know that,” Kellogg said. (p. 238–239)

In the end, Pence refused to do what Trump asked of him. He knew his constitutional duty and he stuck to it. This refusal to reach beyond his constitutional powers is what led to the breakdown of the relationship between Trump and Pence.

Mitch McConnell Speaks the Truth

One final Republican deserves some note here. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, refused to go along with Trump’s plans to falsely claim the election was stolen:

“‘Mr. President,’ McConnell told Trump, ‘the Electoral College has spoken. That’s the way we pick a president in this country.’

“Trump cursed McConnell. Disloyal! Weak! He claimed McConnell had won his reelection bid in Kentucky, months ago, because of Trump’s support.

“‘And this is the thanks I got?’ Trump asked. He was furious. Incredulous. ‘You never really got me. You don’t understand me.’

“McConnell was silent. But Trump’s claim of carrying him was absurd. He noted to aides that in 2014, when Trump was still hosting The Apprentice reality show on NBC, he had won in Kentucky by a 15-point margin, just like in 2020.

“On the phone, McConnell’s final remark to Trump was a short statement of fact.

“‘You lost the election,’ he said, ‘the Electoral College has spoken.’ He hung up.” (p. 182–183)

Later, after the second impeachment of Donald Trump for the events of January 6th, McConnell did not vote against Trump but did state his own views clearly:

“January 6th was a disgrace,” and an act of “terrorism,” he said, fueled by people ‘fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because was angry he’d lost an election.’” (p. 342)

“‘There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible,’ McConnell said. ‘It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landside election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now president.’ (p. 342)

FAQ:

Q: Give me the TLDR version of the above.

A: Without a doubt, Donald Trump and the Republican Party tried to steal the election on January 6th 2021. It was Republican insiders — all loyal to Donald Trump — that documented these attempts and refused to do as Donald Trump asked. They made many attempts to talk Donald Trump out of this course of action and often (like Bill Barr) lost their job in the process.

Q: How do we know this is the truth?

A: What makes Woodward’s and Costa’s book Peril so interesting is that it’s documented from the point of view of Trump loyalists that were on the ground when Trump claimed that the election was stolen from him. So this is a case of counter-bias. By that I mean they were all known to be strongly biased in favor of Trump and wanted him to win the election yet were honest individuals that required evidence. They simply couldn’t find any evidence. Every claim Trump and his team made was investigated and all were found to be misleading, wrong, or in some cases outright fabrications. If there had been any actual evidence of fraud these men were all in positions to help bring this to light and they had the motivations to do so. In the end, they simply did not find the needed evidence of election fraud.

Q: We’re we close to a constitutional crisis?

A: In short, no. The media intentionally blew that out of proportion. (See question below about media lying.) The system is far more resilient than that. The media creating the impression that we almost ‘lost the country’ is a completely unnecessary fabrication that creates the same sort of false fears that Trump created by falsely claiming the election was stolen.

Having said that, 2020 was the first non-peaceful transfer of power in this country in a very long time. That’s huge in and of itself. There is no need to slap false labels on top of that. Just let it sink in that under Trump we failed to have a peaceful transfer of power.

Q: But what would have happened had Mike Pence given in to Trump’s demands?

A: It would have gone to the Supreme Court whom we know would have just proclaimed what Pence did was unconstitutional. The court system didn’t back Trump on anything at all because of how strongly evidence-based they are. Our institutions are not nearly that weak. It’s unfortunate that people undermine faith in the system by pretending we were in some sort of massive crisis.

Q: Okay, but how do we know Trump wasn’t just mistaken?

A: Can you be ‘mistaken’ if you made a public claim on the day of an election — without any evidence whatsoever — that the outcome of the election was fraudulently stolen? In addition, we know from Pence’s story that Trump outrightly pressured him to reach beyond the constitutional powers of his office to try to steal the election. None of this was a simple mistake.

Q: What can we learn about Trump from these stories from his own loyalists?

A: I had an ardent Trump supporter once take me to lunch to try to talk me into voting for Trump. He knew I was a loyal traditional conservative so he thought he could prevail upon me to change my vote.

When he asked me why I wouldn’t vote for Trump I told him outright I’d never vote for someone that openly lied as often as Trump did. He made the following arguments back to me:

1. Trump wasn’t lying because he likely actually did believe his untrue stories

2. Trump didn’t lie any more than any other politician

3. Trump only lied about unimportant things to massage his own ego, like the size of his inaugural crowd.

First, I’d note that my friend might be right that Trump doesn’t actually lie but is in fact delusional. But this is far worse than lying, so that is no defense. When I called Trump a liar, I was being kind.

The violence on January 6th is my direct refutation of the next two points he made. No other politician in American history intentionally tried to undermine public confidence in the election process just to massage his own ego. And the result was that his voters wrongly trusted him that he knew something they didn’t. We now know, through Trump’s own loyal men, that this wasn’t the case. Donald Trump had literally made up the evidence for election fraud.

But his voters, not knowing this, were understandably deeply concerned and even irate. Irate enough to move to violence.

Q: Did Donald Trump organize the violence of January 6th?

A: The correct answer to this question, as of today, is that there is no evidence of this. Woodward and Costa certainly failed to find any.

As a side note, if you can’t accept this answer, then you are in no position to be upset that Trump claimed election fraud without evidence. You need to be consistent on things like this or you undermine your own moral authority.

Q: But didn’t Trump tell his followers at the rally to ‘fight for your country’?

A: Here is the actual quote in context

“Our brightest days are before us. Our greatest achievements still wait. I think one of our great achievements will be election security, because nobody, until I came along, had any idea how corrupt our elections were. … I said something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Clearly in context Trump was talking about fighting for election security, not physical violence.

Q: Does this mean the news media lied about Trump?

A: Yes, it does.

It does not help here to claim that the media were technically telling the truth. Lying by omission or taking a quote out of context is still lying.

The news media has consistently failed us when it came to the subject of Trump and this is a really bad thing. There was no need to lie about Trump. He did so many awful things that merely telling the truth would have worked. But because the news media consistently intermixed truth about Trump was things that were made up, Trump’s voters had good reason to not take their true stories seriously. If they had but stuck with the Truth, likely Trump would have never won the election to begin with. The mainstream news media is at least partially to blame for Trump’s election and his near second election.

Q: Is Donald Trump responsible for the violence of January 6th?

A: Yes, he is.

Mitch McConnell’s view is the correct one here. If you lie to your voters about election fraud, yeah, that tends to lead to violence. We need people in office that won’t lie about things like election outcomes because they take their oath to the Constitution seriously.

Q: Did Trump break the law when he claimed election fraud without evidence or tried to steal the election by pressuring Pence?

A: We do not currently know the answer to this question. Let me tell you what we do know. First, the John Eastman memos were not illegal. Attorneys are legally allowed to make wildly stupid legal suggestions like this. However, it’s up to Trump if he’s going to take the advice or not.

Did Trump do anything illegal? Trump certainly had a legal right (though it was immoral of him if he had no credible evidence as we now know to be the case) to challenge the election in the courts.

Where things get dicey is when Trump actually attempted to pressure Republicans into doing things that were extralegal. In the above story, we saw how he pressured Pence to do something against the Constitution. In fact, Trump did this to other’s Republican’s as well. It is unclear today if Trump crossed legal lines by doing this or not. This is something we need to wait for the courts to work out. It may or may not have raised to the bar of being illegal. The specific facts of the case (that honestly none of us really has as of today) will determine this.

Again, I want to prevail upon those upset with Trump that want to believe that he did something illegal that claims without evidence undermine one’s moral authority. You don’t get to be mad at Trump that he claimed election fraud without evidence if you are going to claim he broke the law without evidence. Instead, wait for the evidence.

Q: Did Trump collude with Russia to win the election?

A: Again, the only correct answer to this question is that as of today — despite a very expensive investigation — we currently know of no evidence that this is the case.

As a side note, if you can’t accept this answer, then you are in no position to be upset that Trump claimed election fraud without evidence. You need to be consistent on things like this or you undermine your own moral authority.

Q: Could it be that the real evidence for election fraud simply did not come to light?

A: This is a strange question. Allow me to explain why. Of course, it might always be the case that there was election fraud and we just didn’t find the evidence for it. But it’s hard to see how that matters one whit. For one thing, that is a true statement for every election we’ve ever had. For another, we do not act on election frauds for which we have no evidence. This is a good policy because that’s the same as saying that our best theory is that there was no election fraud.

Q: Might the people involved simply have not known about the true evidence of election fraud but Trump knew something they didn’t?

A: Again, this is a strange question. Allow me to explain why. It is Trump’s responsibility to bring to light his best evidence. Period end of story. When Trump was going over the evidence with his own loyal Attorney General, Bill Barr, he needed to give the best possible evidence he knew of. Now, in fact, he presumably did! It was just that Trump didn’t have any evidence that was worthwhile. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Trump actually secretly had better evidence available that he didn’t bring up. Well, that was his choice then. We can only work off of the evidence that is actually brought to light. You can’t work with evidence not available to you. (As I’ve emphasized several times now above.) Bill Barr did the only thing that made sense — he looked into the evidence he was told about by Trump and found it all to be incorrect. Had Trump raised any legitimate evidence, things would have gone differently.

And, please explain to me why Trump would ever sit on his best evidence? That doesn’t even make sense.