Bill Lueders at The Bulwark:
IN A RAMBLING VIDEO POSTED LATE LAST NIGHT, Donald Trump said that he found “tremendous amounts of voter fraud in the 2020 election. We have volumes of information. It’s all there.”
Hardly “volumes” and hardly “information,” it turns out.
When I heard last week that Trump had ushered in the new year by releasing a 32-page report titled “Summary of Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election in the Swing States,” I thought it might be something that I could make fun of. It seemed ripe with comic potential. Here are the report’s opening lines: “It has often been repeated there is ‘no evidence’ of fraud in the 2020 Election. In actuality, there is no evidence Joe Biden won.”
But as I read deeper into the report, I had a different reaction. Far from being a laughing matter, this is perhaps the most diabolical document that I have ever seen. It is breathtaking in its denialism, fervent in its commitment to the Big Lie, and masterfully alchemistic in its attempt to turn accusation into evidence. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which he insistently repeats at every opportunity, have never been more compellingly rendered. It’s so slick that you don’t have to be stupid to be taken in, although it helps.
Trump’s decision to release this report in the thick of his multiple legal battles reminds me in its recklessness of the apocryphal conundrum of the Manhattan Project scientists in the film Oppenheimer: They acknowledged the theoretical possibility that an atomic bomb test might set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire planet and then did it anyway.
“Summary of Election Fraud” is, in Trump’s hands, a tactical nuclear weapon meant to destroy one true statement—that Trump lost the 2020 election. But its detonation could create a chain reaction that also destroys whatever remains of his most devoted followers’ ability to perceive reality….
THE “SUMMARY OF ELECTION FRAUD” is unsigned and undated. It catalogues the various reasons to doubt the 2020 electoral results in five pivotal states—Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan.
According to the report, these states “created an irredeemably compromised Election, filled with violations of the Constitution, unlawful ballots, widespread broken chain of custody, electronic manipulation, and missing and corrupted election files that made it uncertifiable—and impossible to recreate the results.” It contends that Trump “was right to voice his objections to what had unfolded before the country’s eyes.”
Everything is laid out, detail by detail; the various claims are assiduously footnoted. The report uses lots of numbers. It includes dozens of statements alleging vote counting errors and irregularities. But, in many cases, the cited sources for this information are complaints filed with election agencies by Trump supporters. Trying to match them with reality is an impossible task.
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For instance, the writeup for Georgia says that, in Fulton County, “seals were broken and memory cards removed” from vote tabulators for more than 300,000 votes. The footnoted source for this is a complaint filed in March 2022 with the Georgia State Elections Board by two individuals who identify themselves as “part of a group who have been researching the 2020 General Election.”
Last month, Georgia officials asked the FBI to investigate one of the complainants, Kevin Moncla of Texas, for sending belligerent emails to members of Georgia’s elections board. Here’s part: “There will be no more excuses. I am putting you on notice that I will be holding you accountable. . . . you are attorneys. I imagine that some of you would like to continue to be.” Multiple reviews in Georgia, including a statewide hand recount and comprehensive audit, found no evidence of significant fraud.