Fact check: A sample of Trump’s false allegations, Republicans said on the day the Capitol was stormed

Both before and after a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, Trump and a group of congressional Republicans repeated the same unfounded election-related nonsense that excited many of the president’s base.

Trump spoke during a rally near the White House. Members of the House and Senate spoke while objecting to some of Joe Biden’s votes.

Trump peppered his speech with his usual series of false allegations about the presidential election he lost – claiming that ‘we won it with a sudden victory’, that the election was’ so corrupt ‘, that anonymous people are the process’ kneeling halter ‘has. and that Joe Biden received ’80 million computer votes’ instead of legal votes.

Facts first: This is all fake. Trump lost a free and fair election to Biden – 306-232 in Electoral College. Biden deserve it more than 81 million legal votes, exceeding Trump’s total by more than 7 million. There is no evidence that the election was conducted in any way.

Pence is “right”

According to Trump, “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we will win the election.” He added: “all Vice President Pence needs to do is send it back to the states for reaffirmation,” which Trump claimed Pence “has the absolute right to do.”

Facts first: This is completely false. There’s nothing in the law about Pence doing nothing but calling counters and announcing the results. The Constitution only gives him the power to count the votes.

According to CNN contributor and law professor Steve Vladeck, Trump’s claim is ‘just not true’.

Vladeck points to the 12th Amendment which sets out the Vice President’s traditional role in the certification process as a major ceremonial. The Vice-President, in his or her role as President of the Senate, is empowered to “open all the certificates and the votes are then counted.”

‘There is no discretion left [the Vice President’s] “No vice president has previously claimed the power to reject any properly formatted certificates,” Vladeck told CNN.

Even the president’s longtime lawyer Jay Sekulow has said that Pence does not have the legal authority to cause such an outcome.

“Some have speculated that the Vice President could simply say, ‘I’m not going to accept these voters,’ that he has the authority to do so in the Constitution. I do not really think that is what the Constitution has in mind. ” If that were the case, any vice president could refuse any election, ‘Sekulow said in his radio program this week, adding that Pence’s role was’ more of a ministerial procedural function’.

Georgia

The president claimed that while many people watched the Georgia election unfold on Tuesday night, “they cheated like hell anyway.”

“Last night was a little better because of the fact that we had a lot of eyes on one particular state,” Trump said, “but they cheated like hell anyway.”

Facts first: This is false. Whether in the general election or in Tuesday’s runoff from the Senate, there is no evidence of fraud with major voters in Georgia. Trump’s claims have been personally and repeatedly refuted by Gabriel Sterling, the manager of the implementation of voting systems in Georgia.

Trump on Tuesday and Wednesday tweeted several false allegations about election fraud.

Tuesday Trump assert that ‘reports come from the 12th Congressional District of Georgia that Dominion Machines no longer operate for more than an hour in certain Republican strongholds’, adding that ‘ballot papers are left in lockers’.

His campaign send e-mails and text messages indicating that it was part of a democratic conspiracy to steal the election.

But there was no stealing or cheating. Tuesday morning, there were some issues with security keys in Columbia County, Georgia. The problem, according to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s foreign minister, was resolved at 10 a.m. and people could vote in the meantime.

Sterling refuted these allegations on Twitter, writing the “issue in Columbia Co. was resolved hours ago and our office informed the public in real time” and “The voices of all will be protected and counted.”

On Wednesday, Trump wrote“They only found 50,000 ballots late last night. The United States is embarrassed by fools.”

Sterling unleashed this conspiracy theory again CNN then on Twitter, and wrote in response to Trump’s message: “No Mr. President, there have been no ‘found’ ballots. We know the number of advanced votes since this weekend.”

“We had a record election day,” Sterling added. “As of Monday, 970,000 absentees had been accepted. There were 31,000 more in yesterday’s total. That leaves 60,000 who came in yesterday.”

Voices in Pennsylvania

Trump claims that there were “205,000 more ballots in Pennsylvania than your voters had.”

Facts first: Untrue. There were no more votes than registered voters in Pennsylvania; civil servants and fact-checkers repeatedly explain that this assertion is false. Trump seems to be adopting the wrong figure from a Republican lawmaker who did. relied on incomplete data.

Election night

Trump claimed that the election was over “at 10 a.m.” on election night, when he had a lead in the polls in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but when “bullshit explosions” took place.

Facts first: It is obviously false that the election was over at this early stage of the counting process. There’s a simple explanation for Trump’s big initial clues in some states he eventually lost, including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan: he led because many ballots have not been counted yet. There is no indication that he lost the clues for any suspicious reason.

Media sales and political analysts noted weeks before election day that we would probably see a ‘red sky’ in which Trump initially looks like it’s big in some countries that counted the last ballots. Ballot papers largely benefited Biden so much because Trump regularly discouraged his own supporters from voting by mail. In a number of states, lawmakers have banned election officials from processing votes early, leading to delays.

Ballot papers by post

Trump continued to lie about the consent of the entry and said there is widespread fraud in the consent.

“Using the pretext of the China virus and the ballot paper scam, the Democrats this year tried to do the most shameless and outrageous election,” he said. “Theft and there has never been anything like it. It’s a pure theft in American history, everyone knows that.”

Facts first: The president is repeating a lie he made before election day. Consent is safe, has existed for decades and studies have shown that absenteeism is extremely low. Trump may have led the field in the field on election night, but that’s because states counted the votes cast on election day first, and the absent and absent votes second.

Millions of Americans voted by mail during the 2016 election, and again during the 2020 election, and there was no widespread fraud. Extensive studies on billions of ballot papers released over many years indicate that the rate fraud is less than 0.0001%.

“Bags” of ballot papers

Trump said on election night in Fulton County, Georgia, officials “plucked suitcases of the ballot papers from under a table,” which was “totally fraudulent.”

Facts first: Trump’s claims are completely unfounded. After checking the footage of the polling station in question, the civil servants and provincial officials determined that the conduct of the ballot box was part of the normal process, not fraud. According to election officials, the items pulled under the table were bins, not suitcases.

You can read a longer fact check here.

Audits

Trump claims “not one swing state has conducted a comprehensive audit to remove the illegal ballots.”

Facts first: This is false. At least two swing states conducted audits but found no evidence of widespread fraud.

Georgia conducted both a nationwide audit, with about 5 million ballots and an additional recount, while Arizona conducted audits in its four largest provinces.

Voice Viewers

On the floor of the house, Lee Zeldin, a representative of New York, denied Trump’s claims that the pollsters were banned from counting seats or otherwise prevented from observing the count and the access they legally deserved.

According to Zeldin, “there were pollsters who denied the ability to closely monitor the mood of the ballot.”

Facts first: Nowhere in the US are there reports of systematic irregularities with bearings. There is no evidence to confirm the allegations that the ballot box was not closed during the process.

You can read more here about what happened to poll viewers in specific states.

Election day extended

The president of Ohio, Ohio, objected to Pennsylvania’s election votes, claiming that the Supreme Court extended the election day in the Commonwealth.

“Pennsylvania law says ballot papers must be on Election Day by 8 p.m. The Democratic Supreme Court said, ‘No, we’re going to extend it, Election Day does not end on Tuesday.” “They took it to Friday,” Jordan said.

Facts first: It is misleading and needs context. While it is true that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has extended the deadline for voting ballots for Pennsylvania, election day has not been extended, and it is false to indicate that votes cast after Tuesday are in any way be counted.

Prior to the election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court allowed votes received up to three days after the election to be counted, even without a valid postmark.

As CNN’s Ariane de Vogue reported earlier, Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to step in to re-introduce an election day deadline for voting ballots. On October 19, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it was stuck 4-4, meaning the three-day extension could take effect. After Trump’s judge, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed in the Supreme Court, Republicans brought their challenge to court, but Barrett did not participate in the case and the judges rejected the request because there was not enough time. to decide before the election.

Undocumented voters

Rep. Mo Brooks claims that “Joe Biden obtained approximately 1,032,000 votes through illegal foreign votes.”

Facts first: This is completely unfounded.

There is no evidence that more than a million immigrants voted without documents, and according to experts, voter fraud of any kind is extremely rare.

This is not the first time Brooks has raised the issue of undocumented immigrants in an effort to challenge the 2020 results. On December 3, he accused Praying to “buy” illegal foreign votes “through promises of amnesty and claim that Trump” won [the] electoral college and re-election. ”

This story is being updated

CNN’s Melissa Tapia contributed to this article.

.Source