WASHINGTON – A federal indictment and one in Georgia charging Donald Trump with mendacity in regards to the 2020 election to overturn President Joe Biden’s win have carried out not anything to sluggish the geyser of election falsehoods flowing from the previous president and his supporters.
Just two days after the Georgia indictment, one among Trump’s maximum enthusiastic backers took the degree at a convention in Missouri to once more unfold election incorrect information. Mike Lindell, the landlord of MyPillow who’s a vocal promoter of the parable that the 2020 presidential election was once stolen, kicked off an match on purported election crimes with a video about fraud.
It integrated photos from November 2020 that purported to display a Fulton County, Georgia, election employee pulling a briefcase of ballots from below a table to surreptitiously upload them to the tally.
As proof has since proven, the employee, Ruby Freeman, was once merely doing her process — pulling out a regular govt container filled with actual ballots that had to be counted. Three different counts of the Georgia vote, together with one by way of hand, confirmed the ballots have been tallied correctly and the results have been correct.
But Freeman and her daughter, who additionally labored within the elections place of business that night time, have been centered by way of Trump and his allies and accused of serving to throw the election to Biden, when compared to drug sellers and deluged with threats. The girls testified before the congressional Jan. 6 committee about their ordeal and sued a number of Trump backers, together with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, for libel. The lies about them are a central a part of final week’s indictment of Trump and his allies for allegedly conspiring to unfold incorrect information to thieve the Georgia election.
Yet they persevered. During his convention, Lindell prefaced the video by way of announcing “it isn’t about evidence” and supposed to evoke the ambience of December 2020, as Trump was once difficult the election results and trying to to find avenues to stay in energy. The anonymously produced video, filled with fevered reviews of different ”anomalies” within the election, opens with the phrases “this video is pure data.”
“I never forgot this video,” Lindell stated.
Nor has the Republican citizens. Although Trump’s allegations have repeatedly been disproven — regularly by way of his own advisers — they’ve taken a company dangle amongst his birthday party. An Associated Press poll last week discovered 57% of Republicans stated they didn’t view Biden as a legitimately elected president.
The 98-page Georgia indictment lists a number of false allegations made by way of Trump that have been temporarily disproven by way of fellow Republicans, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and Gov. Brian Kemp. Still, Trump insists to nowadays that the election was once stolen from him and continues to lie about it.
After the indictment, he promised a press convention this week revealing a document he claimed would display how the Georgia election was once stolen from him — a pledge he rescinded on Thursday, announcing his attorneys sought after to make his argument in a courtroom submitting as an alternative.
“Does anybody really believe I lost Georgia?” Trump requested on his Truth Social community Saturday. “I DON’T.”
By repeating the lie over and over, even if it’s been many times uncovered as baseless, Trump isn’t just making sure that his unswerving fans stay energized, but additionally dominating the dialogue and forcing others to relitigate the 2020 election on his phrases.
At the hot Iowa State Fair, the place he was once campaigning for that state’s presidential caucus subsequent 12 months, Trump again claimed the 2020 election was once “rigged.” In anticipation of the Georgia indictment, Trump’s campaign issued a statement a week ago saying prosecutors were “taking away President Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the right to challenge a rigged and stolen election that the Democrats do all the time.”
His attorneys have defended his actions by saying the former president sincerely believes fraud cost him reelection.
Lee McIntyre, a Boston University researcher, noted that many of Trump’s followers no longer see other Americans as legitimate opposition, but rather as an enemy. “This is strategic,” McIntyre said. “This is not a mistake. Somebody is profiting from this — politically, ideologically or financially — and we know it’s Trump.”
Known as “affective polarization,” that phenomenon has led to increased violence and political destablization in other nations. This month, FBI agents fatally shot an armed Utah man who had threatened to kill Biden and referred to himself online as a “MAGA Trumper.”
“It’s not just that the other side is wrong, it’s that the other side is evil, and they deserve to be punished, maybe even physically harmed,” McIntyre said. “It is no longer about facts, but about trust. It’s about teams, and which side you’re on.”
Still, the political danger to Trump of continuing his false claims of widespread fraud in 2020 also was underscored last week. The same poll finding that 57% of Republicans don’t believe Biden was legitimately elected also found that 7 out of 10 Americans overall saw his election as valid. Trump will need to convince some of those voters if he is to return to the White House in 2024.
By resurfacing his false claims about the 2020 election, Trump is reminding voters of how even some of his staunchest supporters opposed his scheme to stay in power.
Trump’s vow to prove Georgia was stolen drew a sharp rebuke from Kemp on the site formerly known as Twitter: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” Kemp wrote on Tuesday. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law.”
Trump’s personal vice chairman agreed.
“Despite what the President and his allies have now stated for greater than 2.5 years, and proceed to insist at this very hour, the Georgia election was once no longer stolen and I had no proper to overturn the election on January sixth,” Mike Pence wrote on the internet web site now referred to as X.
Indeed, the indictment lists a lot of fees in regards to the election Trump and his allies made in public, earlier than subcommittees of the Georgia Legislature in a last-ditch effort to convince them to change Biden’s electors with ones for Trump and even in a abruptly pushed aside lawsuit they filed.
For instance, Trump’s supporters many times claimed in testimony to lawmakers that they discovered 10,315 lifeless other folks had voted within the election. Georgia officers investigated and discovered most effective 4.
Trump and his backers additionally claimed that numerous underaged other folks had registered to vote — 66,248, Trump lawyer Ray Stallings instructed a legislative committee on Dec. 3, 2020. Raffensperger’s place of business stated no such citizens exist.
They additionally many times cited the recordings of Freeman and her daughter, with Giuliani telling lawmakers that the ladies, who’re Black, have been passing one USB power again and forth like “vials of heroin or cocaine.”
The baseless allegations proceed. Trump has stated he’s going to use the film “2000 Mules,” which was once produced by way of a conservative filmmaker and has been widely debunked for the usage of unsuitable research, in his protection at trial. It alleges a conspiracy in Georgia and different swing states to deliver pretend mail ballots to drop containers.
Georgia government investigated one guy who was once recorded allegedly making an unlawful poll drop within the film and discovered the votes he deposited have been for his circle of relatives and due to this fact criminal. He has sued the filmmakers. Georgia government, after many times asking for extra proof of the crimes alleged and getting not anything, even have filed go well with.
Reporting by way of The Associated Press additionally published no widespread problems with the usage of drop containers throughout the 2020 election.
Three years after the election, Trump’s claims had been rejected by way of dozens of judges, together with a number of he appointed, his personal attorney general and dozens of reviews, audits and recounts within the battleground states, a number of overseen by way of Republican lawmakers.
Even if his gamble does not repay for him in 2024, Trump’s distortions have left a mark on the country’s political machine by way of expanding polarization and convincing a sizeable chew of the American public that its elections and justice machine can now not be relied on, stated David Becker, govt director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and co-author of “The Big Truth,” a e-book caution of the risks of Trump’s election lies.
“The scary thing is, those pushing these lies don’t need to get you to believe the loser won,” Becker stated. “They simply want to get you to imagine that no person ever wins. All of our democratic establishments that we’ve constructed up over 250 years are in danger.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver.