The executive summary of the House Jan. 6 committee鈥檚 report documents how then-President Donald Trump was repeatedly warned by those closest to him 鈥 Cabinet members, campaign officials and even family members 鈥 that claims he had lost his reelection due to fraud were false. But Trump spread those lies anyway.
鈥淭his was not him hearing this from Joe Biden鈥檚 spokesman on MSNBC,鈥 David Becker, co-author of 鈥淭he Big Truth,鈥 a book about the damage of Trump鈥檚 election lies, said in an interview.
Trump's in the sparked the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and have helped fuel millions of dollars in donations to the Republican former president. Here are details showing he was told the truth about his loss and chose instead to lie about it.
PLANNING THE LIE AHEAD OF TIME
The Jan. 6 committee has made clear that Trump long planned to claim victory, whether he actually won or not. His allies were boasting of how they could try to fool the public to make it seem that he had won reelection. The committee cites correspondence from Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch to the White House in October 2020 in which Fitton urges Trump to say after polls close: 鈥淲e had an election. I won.鈥
The committee also obtained a recording of Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who told associates the week before the election that 鈥渨hat Trump鈥檚 gonna do is just declare victory, right? He鈥檚 gonna declare victory. But that doesn鈥檛 mean he鈥檚 a winner. He鈥檚 just gonna say he鈥檚 a winner.鈥
Trump had spent months demonizing mail voting, which swelled in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The then-president also insisted the only way he would lose the election would be by massive voter fraud. When Trump did declare victory early in the morning the day after Election Day, he exploited a quirk in vote counting in which in-person votes, which leaned GOP, were tallied first, putting him temporarily ahead. He demanded that local election officials stop counting outstanding ballots, which leaned Democratic.
鈥淧resident Trump's decision to declare victory falsely on election night and, unlawfully, to call for the vote counting to stop, was not a spontaneous decision,鈥 the committee wrote in the executive summary for its report. 鈥淚t was premeditated.鈥
LIES ABOUT VOTING MACHINES
By Nov. 7, when those outstanding Democratic votes had been tallied and most news organizations had called the race for Joe Biden, Trump's own campaign knew he had lost.
鈥淭he group that went over there outlined, you know, my belief and chances for success at this point,鈥 his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, testified before the committee. 鈥淎nd then we pegged that at, you know, 5, maybe 10 percent based on recounts.鈥
Stepien added that Trump believed him: "He was pretty realistic with our viewpoint, in agreement with our viewpoint of kind of the forecast and the uphill climb we thought he had.鈥
Still, Trump continued to insist he had won. His legal team largely walked away from the case, and was replaced by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and litigator Sidney Powell, who began to make , to the dismay of White House attorneys, who warned Trump .
The president grabbed hold of a development in a rural, conservative county in Michigan, where voting machines had initially undercounted his margin of victory. Human error turned out to be the cause. When the paper ballots were tallied and run back through the machine, they were counted correctly.
Trump knew this, the committee says, because told him so on Dec. 1, 2020. Barr testified that he told the president that the paper ballot tally matched the final results. Yet the next day, Trump said in a speech: 鈥淚n one Michigan county, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.鈥
Barr and others in the administration kept telling Trump that in Michigan or with Dominion, a major vendor of voting machinery. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told Trump there were no apparent problems, and even Trump's national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, rebutted a wild conspiracy theory about Dominion being connected to hostile foreign governments. But, the committee said, between November 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, about Dominion nearly three dozen times.
LIES ABOUT DEAD VOTERS, NUMBERS
Trump fanned other conspiracy theories, too, despite being told they were false. He claimed that more than 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia, a state he lost by more than 11,000 votes. But Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, corrected him during a Jan. 2 phone call, saying local election officials had researched the question, cross-referencing obituaries and other data.
鈥淭he actual number were two,鈥 Raffensperger told the president. 鈥淭wo. Two people that were dead that voted. So that's wrong.鈥
Four days later, during his speech at the Jan. 6 rally before his supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump declared: 鈥淥ver 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.鈥
Raffensperger also corrected other Trump claims about Georgia, including that 18,325 voters were registered at vacant addresses and that 4,925 voters from out of state cast ballots there. But Trump repeated them in the run-up to Jan. 6 and during his rally.
Trump put out more bad numbers after being told they were false.
鈥淭he President then continued, there are 鈥榤ore votes than voters,鈥欌 Richard Donoghue told the committee of a Dec. 27, 2020, conversation with Trump when Donoghue was the acting deputy attorney general. Donoghue said he told the president that he was comparing 2016 voter registration with 2020 voting numbers, which was inaccurate because more people were registered to vote during Trump's reelection year. He later specifically warned against using a Pennsylvania number.
But on the ellipse on Jan. 6, Trump declared: 鈥淚n Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters.鈥
FALSE ATTACKS ON ELECTION WORKERS
Trump also baselessly claimed were committing fraud, despite warnings from his own law enforcement officers that they were doing nothing wrong. Rosen recounted to the committee a Dec. 15 conversation in which Trump asked about a video that purported to show Georgia election workers receiving a suitcase of ballots.
鈥淲e said, 'It wasn鈥檛 a suitcase. It was a bin. That's what they use when counting ballots,'鈥 Rosen recalled. 鈥淚t's benign.鈥
One week later, the report says, Trump declared: 鈥淭here is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.鈥
Trump complained about purported misbehavior by election workers in the security camera footage to Raffensperger during the Jan. 2 call. Raffensperger warned the president off the recording.
鈥淚 think that's extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context,鈥 the secretary of state told Trump.
Raffensperger offered to send Trump a link from a local television station that debunked the lies. 鈥淚 don't need a link,鈥 Trump replied.
The next day, he complained that Raffensperger was 鈥渦nwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 鈥榖allots under the table鈥 scam, ballot destruction, out of state 鈥榲oters,鈥 dead voters and more. He has no clue!鈥
