FACT CHECK: Trump’s made-up claims of fake Georgia votes
GEORGIA, USA (AP) — President Donald Trump put forth a dizzying array of fuzzy accounting and outright false claims in an extraordinary phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state seeking a reversal of his election defeat, fabricating a slew of votes that he said should’ve been counted in his favour.
In the hour-long conversation Saturday with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump suggested that the Republican “find” enough votes to hand Trump the victory.
A look at some of Trump’s claims on the call and how they compare with reality:
TRUMP: “If we can go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear we won, we won very substantially in Georgia.”
THE FACTS: No, Trump lost Georgia in an election the state has certified for Democrat Joe Biden. Republican election officials have affirmed the election was conducted and counted fairly.
With ballots counted three times, including once by hand, Georgia’s certified totals show Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly five million cast. Raffensperger certified the totals with officials, saying they’ve found no evidence that Trump won.
No credible claims of fraud or systemic errors have been sustained. Judges have turned away legal challenges to the results, although at least one is still pending in state court.
TRUMP: “People should be happy to have an accurate count... We have other states I believe will be flipping to us shortly.”
THE FACTS: No reversal of the election outcome is in the offing, in Georgia or other states.
Biden defeated Trump by some seven million popular votes nationwide and by a tally of 306-232 in the Electoral College, achieving victory in other key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of his own Administration’s Homeland Security Department.
A group of Senate Republicans, led by Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, say they plan to object to the election results when Congress meets on Wednesday to tally Biden’s Electoral College victory over Trump.
The objections will force votes in both the House and Senate, but none are expected to prevail.
TRUMP: “The other thing, dead people. So, dead people voted. And I think the number is in the — close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries; they went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”
THE FACTS: Not true. Georgia officials have debunked previous claims by the Trump campaign in November that three particular people had voted illegally, finding that other people with similar names had voted. At the time, a local district attorney announced an investigation into whether a ballot had illegally been cast in the name of a north-west Georgia man who died in 2015.
On Saturday, Raffensperger said two illegal votes on behalf of dead people have been confirmed, not thousands as Trump alleged. “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. And so, that’s wrong,” Raffensperger said.
TRUMP: “We have anywhere from 250 [thousand] to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked.”
THE FACTS: There’s nothing mysterious or suspect about it. He is describing a legitimate vote counting process, not a sudden surge of malfeasance.
Trump appears to be referring to large numbers of votes that were tabulated in the early hours of Wednesday morning after election day and later. The arrival of those votes was not mysterious, but expected, because many of Georgia’s 159 counties had large stacks of mail-in ballots that had to be tabulated after polls closed and in-person ballots were counted.