#false claims of election fraud

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich testified Thursday before a federal grand jury investigating January 6, 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Gingrich allegedly communicated with senior advisers to former President Donald Trump about television advertisements that relied on false claims of election fraud, according to documents obtained by the House select committee that investigated January 6. The panel also claimed Gingrich played a role in the effort to submit fake slates of electors in battleground states that Trump lost, according to committee documents.

An attorney for Gingrich did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up, the probe into the attack on the US Capitol and efforts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election has carried on.

Prosecutors have interviewed witnesses in recent weeks and, in at least one case with right-wing podcast host Steve Bannon, issued a new subpoena for grand jury testimony, people familiar with the matter said.

#us politics #news #cnn politics #2023 #republicans #conservatives #newt gingrich #federal grand jury #captiol riot investigation #captiol protests #jan 6 insurrection #capitol riot probe #false slate of electors #false claims of election fraud #gop #donald trump

[tomorrowusa]

Many Republicans all over the US have hopped on the Trump Big Lie bandwagon. They claim that Trump lost because of election “fraud” - yet they are totally unable to identify any proven cases of fraud. And a majority of verified vote fraud instances turn out to be committed by Republicans.

More than 100 Republican nominees for statewide office or Congress this year have falsely claimed that election fraud helped defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Almost 150 members of Congress — more than half of the Republicans serving there — went so far as to vote to overturn the 2020 election result.

These claims of election fraud have become the mainstream Republican position. In some places, winning a nomination virtually requires making such statements. In other places, the claims appear to carry little political cost, at least in the primaries. And very few elected Republicans have been willing to denounce the falsehoods.

Consistency? Nah...

They have offered no good evidence, because there is not any. They have also failed to offer even a logically consistent argument. Consider:

If anything, the rare examples of cheating from 2020 tend to involve Trump supporters. Prosecutors charged three registered Republicans living at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, with voting more than once in the presidential election. One of them has since pleaded guilty: he both voted in Florida and cast an absentee ballot in Michigan.

Trump and his allies have never explained how other Republicans could have done so well if fraud were widespread. In the 2020 House elections, Republicans gained 14 seats. In the Senate, Democrats did win a 50-50 split, but the party lost races in Maine, Montana and North Carolina that it had hoped to win. In the 2021 elections, Republicans did well again, winning the governor’s race in Virginia. It’s hardly a picture consistent with Democratic election rigging.

During the 2022 primaries, most Republican candidates have accepted the results without claiming fraud. That’s been true even of candidates who lost their races, as my colleagues Reid Epstein and Nick Corasaniti have reported. Examples include Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina; Representative Mo Brooks in the Senate primary in Alabama; and two Trump-backed candidates in Georgia. When Trump supporters lose to other Republicans, they generally accept defeat.

Republicans have become enemies of democracy because it doesn’t let them always win.

If some wannabe GOP Gauleiter is running for office in your area while spreading The Big Lie, demand verifiable proof of voter fraud from 2020. After getting no such proof, tell him or her: STOP THE LYING!

#elections #republicans #the big lie #donald trump #false claims of voter fraud #sore loser #election 2020 #david leonhardt

[follow-up-news]

The apology letters that Donald Trump-allied lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro were required to write as a condition of their plea deals in the Georgia election interference case are just one sentence long. The letters, obtained Thursday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request, were hand-written and terse. Neither letter acknowledges the legitimacy of Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia’s 2020 election nor denounces the baseless conspiracy theories they pushed to claim Trump was cheated out of victory through fraud. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” Powell wrote in a letter dated Oct. 19, the same day she pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties. “I apologize to the citizens of the state of Georgia and of Fulton County for my involvement in Count 15 of the indictment,” Chesebro wrote in a letter dated Oct. 20, when he appeared in court to plead guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the election interference case, declined Thursday to comment on the contents of the letters. Powell and Chesebro were among four defendants to plead guilty in the case after reaching agreements with prosecutors. They were indicted alongside Trump and others in August and charged with participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally keep the Republican in power. The remaining 15 defendants — including Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — have all pleaded not guilty.

#georgia #sidney powell #kenneth chesebro #election interference

[robertreich]

5 Facts About Trump’s Indictments

Trump’s defenders are still lying about his indictments. Here are 5 crucial facts you can share with whoever in your life needs to hear them.

1. President Biden did not indict Trump.

Four different grand juries — made up of ordinary citizens — indicted Trump after being presented with evidence they found compelling enough to warrant criminal prosecution.

The reason we have grand juries is specifically to help make sure no one gets prosecuted out of a personal vendetta.

2. This isn’t about “free speech”

In all four cases, Trump has been indicted because of what he allegedly did, not what he said. Lots of crimes involve speech, but that doesn’t stop them from being crimes. Even Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, Bill Barr, recognizes this defense is nonsense.

3. It doesn’t matter whether Trump believed the election was stolen

There’s plenty of evidence that Trump knew he lost the election fair and square. His claims of massive fraud were rejected by his own campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his hand-picked Justice Department officials. 

And privately, Trump seemed to admit that he either knew or didn’t care that his claims were false, allegedly criticizing VP Pence for being “too honest,” and allegedly admitting to his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that he lost and wanted to cover it up.

But even if Trump really did believe the election was stolen, that doesn’t give him the right to allegedly commit a criminal conspiracy to try to steal it back.

4. Trump has received preferential treatment because of who he is.

Trump’s defenders complain about a two-tiered justice system.

They’re right about that, but not in the way they claim. Trump has been given special privileges most criminal defendants would never get.

In all four criminal cases, he has been released without bail. He has repeatedly been spared the indignity of a mugshot. He has not had his passport suspended or had limits placed on his ability to travel — even though two of his criminal cases involve direct threats to national security, and even though he has used social media to issue insults and threats against potential witnesses, behavior that would cause many criminal defendants to be held without bail pending trial.

5. Trump was in legal trouble long before entering politics

Some of Trump’s defenders claim the sheer number of criminal charges and civil suits he’s now facing is proof that he’s being targeted for political reasons. But you have to remember that Trump was the subject of about 4,000 legal actions before ever running for president. From his fraudulent Trump University scam to federal lawsuits over racist housing discrimination, Trump has spent his life in court because of his own shady behavior.

Trump is being prosecuted now because, as four grand juries have found, the strength of the evidence against him merits it. If we fail to hold him fully accountable under the law, the precedent will embolden future presidents to break the law, jeopardize national security, incite insurrections, and possibly even overturn an election.

The principle that no one is above the law is only true if we make it so.

#youtube #Donald Trump #Politics #Video #Videos #Republicans #Election #Joe Biden #United States

[wilwheaton]

“Mr. President," a reporter asked Trump on Monday, "you said Sidney Powell wasn’t your attorney, are you concerned that you won’t be covered by attorney-client privilege?” “No, not at all," Trump replied. "We did nothing – This is all Biden. Indictments, and impeachments, and this is all about Biden, he can’t do anything right. The only thing they know how to do is cheat on elections and election fraud. This is all Biden's. All of these indictments that you see. I was never indicted. Practically never heard the word. It wasn’t a word that registered.”

Trump serves up massively false claim about his 91 criminal charges

Um...

[contemplatingoutlander]

Jack Smith is really, really good at explaining why Trump was indicted. This annotated copy of the indictment from the NY Times is worth reading. Here are a few highlights:

3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies: a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified (“the certification proceeding”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); and c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election (“the federal government function’).

#trump #jan 6th indictment #annotated indictment #jack smith #the new york times

[queeranarchism]

A cheerful thing in between all the depressing stuff lately: it is very interesting to me to see leading voices on the far-right discover that the new conspiracy believers that they have created are actually very difficult to control.

At first it was some minor conspiracy influencers who suddenly found themselves to be the villain at the center of a new conspiracy theory.

Then November 2020 FOX News found out that their audience would turn on a dime if FOX didn’t continue to validate election fraud stories, so they knowingly lied for months and now they’re in such big legal trouble that it could potentially destroy them.

Then this week Trump claimed he might be arrested and called on his followers to go out and protest, but he’s not getting what he wants. Most of the biggest MAGA voices are warning people to stay home because since January 6th they’ve convinced themselves that protests are ‘false flag operations’. So even Trump, the one least likely to fall out of their favor, can’t actually reliably control what his followers do.

And, like, who knows what’s next? So long as the people who believe that ‘The Storm’ is coming continue to get disappointed, they will continue to look for wild explanations and for people to blame. Some of big far-right names will do what FOX did: give the crowd whatever they want until one day the tower of lies crumbles. Others will fail and will suddenly find themselves accused of being a Deep State Asset or something like that. And they will find out that conspiracy theorists eat them own when they smell blood.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

BREAKING: Brazil court votes to bar Bolsonaro from running for office

Brazil’s top elections court voted Friday to bar Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years — a period that covers the next presidential election — for making what members of the panel said were claims he knew to be false about the integrity of the country’s voting systems.

As president, the “Trump of the Tropics” repeatedly asserted without evidence that the voting systems in Latin America’s largest country were vulnerable to fraud. With the vote of Judge Cármen Lúcia Friday afternoon, the seven-member Superior Electoral Court reached a majority to convict the right-wing populist of abuse of power for undermining faith in the country’s young democracy.

The ruling, if it survives a planned Supreme Court appeal, means Bolsonaro, 68, won’t be able to run for president until the 2030 election, when he’ll be 75. It’s the first time in the court’s 90-year history that it has applied the ban to a former president.

Bolsonaro, aides and allies anticipated the result.

Continue reading.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #brazilian elections #superior electoral court #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

[athingofvikings]

For all that I'm completely willing and supportive in letting people identify however they choose, there are some contexts where you can't self-ID completely freely. The types that inspired this? Religion, ethnicity, and politics.

Religion and ethnicity are fairly straightforward; in my context, I've seen so, so many people who think that they can "declare [themselves] to be Jewish" and are flabbergasted and in denial that it's not that simple. This also goes for any closed tribal group or identity, so I think that doesn't need much explanation.

But politics, I hear you ask? How can self-ID be a problem there?

Well, let me paint you a picture.

A number of years back, before Drump's election, I was active on the BoingBoing BBS, and there was an individual who went by Max_Blanke. Max claimed to be a political moderate, insisting on it again and again and again...

But every position he took was on the political right, very often the far-right. Police shooting a black man with his hands up? "Wait for the investigation, we don't have all of the information." Black Lives Matter protestors marching? They're nothing but potential rioters and an active threat to law and order. Muslim women being harassed and assaulted? False flag operation. Trump supporters being socially ostracized? They're clearly one step away from being rounded up and put into reeducation camps. Police officer with a Nazi tattoo on his arm? Oh, that's not exactly a Nazi eagle, it's different in a few tiny details. Republicans engaging in voter suppression? Don't we all know that the real threat is voter inflation and voter fraud?

And so forth.

It got to the point that it was pretty damn obvious that he was either A) a closeted fascist in denial, or B) a troll.

But he claimed, loudly and repeatedly, that he was a moderate, and that we were just bullying him, and so long as he kept his bigotry quiet and deniable, he was able to keep from being censured by the mods.

And this is a pattern I see again and again and again. Max was just one example (admittedly one that I took a lot of pleasure in ripping to pieces, calling out his fallacies and double standards, and showing his patterns of behavior to the rest of the forum, which is why he comes easily to mind); you will have people who claim to be socialists... but who regurgitate every right-wing culture war talking point. You will find people who claim to be progressive... but the actions and rules they want implemented would make society into a totalitarian surveillance state. You will find people who claim that they are leftists... and the behavioral standards they espouse could have come from Baptist preachers. And so forth.

Of course, there's the question of "Why is this important?"

Because end goals matter. This is not a matter of "my tribe wins"; these ideas will affect real people if and when they get implemented.

[americanprimitives]

The charging document says that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, “was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

No punches pulled.

#trump indictment

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

An Arizona grand jury has charged 18 people involved in the scheme to create a slate of false electors for Donald Trump, including 11 people who served as those fake electors and seven Trump allies who aided the scheme. Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, announced the charges on Wednesday, and said the 11 fake electors had been charged with felonies for fraud, forgery and conspiracy. Beyond the fake electors themselves, high-profile Trump affiliates have been charged with aiding in the scheme: Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman.

Those charged over their roles as false electors include two sitting lawmakers, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, have been charged, as has Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman and Turning Point USA executive, and Jim Lamon, who ran for US Senate in 2022. The others charged in the fake electors scheme are Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten. The indictment says: “In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as president on November 3 2020. Unwilling to accept this fact, defendants and unindicted co-conspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep unindicted co-conspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters. This scheme would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, a close margin in the typically red state that immediately prompted allegations of voter fraud that persist to this day. The state has remained a hotbed of election denialism, despite losses for Republicans who embraced election-fraud lies at the state level. Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case. The indictment refers to Trump himself as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” throughout, noting how the former president schemed to keep himself in office, and how those around him, even those who believed he lost, aided this effort. Some involved have claimed they signed on as an alternate slate of electors in case court decisions came down in Trump’s favor, so they would have a backup group that could be certified by Congress should Trump prevail.

An Arizona grand jury handed down 18 indictments to those involved in the scheme to award 11 fake electors to give Donald Trump the state of Arizona in 2020, despite the fact that Joe Biden flipped the state in his narrow win. Donald Trump has been named unindicted co-conspirator #1.

The persons indicted for aiding and abetting efforts to help the fake electors: Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, Christina Bobb, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Boris Epshteyn.

Some of the notable fake electors charged include: former AZGOP chair Kelli Ward, TPUSA employee Tyler Bowyer, and 2022 GOP US Senate candidate Jim Lamon.

#Fake Electors #The Big Lie #2020 Arizona Elections #2020 Presidential Election #2020 Elections #Arizona #Donald Trump #Kelli Ward #Tyler Bowyer #Jenna Ellis #Kenneth Chesebro #Rudy Giuliani #Mike Roman #Christina Bobb #Mark Meadows #John Eastman #Jim Lamon #Boris Epshteyn

[soberscientistlife]

They should sue The Former Guy (TFG).

[republikkkanorcs]

🤡

#Rudy Ghouliani #Trump Sycophant #republican assholes #crooked donald #maga morons #never trump

[mariacallous]

The Arizona primary is today, and there have already been allegations of voter fraud. Last month, a woman from Arizona who works with the right-wing group Turning Point USA posted a picture to X (formerly Twitter) of two mail-in ballots along with two early voting packets for the primary.

“Maricopa county at its finest, my first time ever voting in a presidential preference election and I received not one but two mail-in ballots” Aubrey Savela wrote in the accompanying caption, suggesting the situation was proof of voter fraud in Arizona.

Savela’s post would likely have been lost in the flood of election conspiracies posted on the platform had she not added another line: “Thank you @stephen_richer.”

Stephen Richer is the Maricopa County Recorder and is responsible for the administration of early voting and mail-in ballots for today’s primaries and November’s election. Richer, a Republican, responded to Savela quickly on X: In just 178 words, Richer laid out exactly why Savela had received two ballots. It turned out that she had changed her voter registration on the final day of allowed before the election, and her original ballot had already been posted. Richer also explained that it wasn’t voter fraud, as Savela claimed, since the first ballot automatically becomes redundant when a second ballot is issued and would not be counted even if used. His tweet has been viewed over 3 million times and has received 55,000 likes.

“We always research it,” Richer tells WIRED from his office in Maricopa County. “I had my suspicions, and my suspicions turned out to be exactly right, which was that this person made a last-minute voter registration change and that the system worked exactly as it did, and then I just spent maybe two minutes typing out that explanation.”

The replies were ecstatic: “This Richer guy is an assassin,” one of many positive responses reads. “I’m hiring him to tweet [at] all my ex boyfriends. Be better, Aubrey.”

This isn’t the first time Richer has done something like this. From his very first days in office in January 2021, Richer has tackled disinformation about the voting process in Arizona head on by using X to directly debunk conspiracies and respond to posts on the platform. Richer also shares updates about how many people have voted in elections, posts information about voting dates and locations, and even keeps his DMs open, as he believes the people of Maricopa County should have the opportunity to ask him questions directly.

Richer’s work seems necessary, as Arizona has been ground zero for election conspiracists ever since the 2020 election when the bogus recount run by Cyber Ninjas found that President Joe Biden did actually win. Since then, election deniers have become household names in the state, like former TV star Kari Lake, who failed to win the governor’s race in 2022 but continues to claim the election was stolen. Lake is now seeking the GOP nomination to run for Senate—and has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick for former president Donald Trump. Lake is joined on the ballot by Wendy Rogers, a member of the Oath Keepers who is running for reelection to the Arizona state senate, and Mark Finchem, who lost his secretary of state race in 2022 and is now seeking reelection to the state senate. Rogers and Finchem, like at least 38 elected officials across the state, have both claimed that Trump won the 2020 election.

Election conspiracists haven’t quit since the election, either: A Maricopa Board of Supervisors ended in chaos last month after a group of election conspiracists rushed the dais at the end of the meeting shouting that a “revolution” was underway. Board members had to be ushered out a side door by security guards. Threats and harassment from Trump supporters have driven hundreds of election officials to resign, and thousands more to go silent over fears of being attacked.

This all makes Richer an outlier. Richer has continued to speak out against allegations of election fraud and insecurity, despite ongoing threats and harassment. Richer does it, he tells WIRED, because he still believes he’s best-placed to counter disinformation being spread online. And Richer has thrown his hat into the ring once again and is seeking reelection for Maricopa County Recorder in November. In the Republican primary, Richer faces Justin Heap, a state representative who has been a vocal critic of election administration in Maricopa County and is aligned with numerous election deniers.

“Going online and engaging on Twitter does open you up to a certain amount of return fire, which might not be something that some people want to have in their lives,” Richers says. “Our approach in Maricopa County has been to put out as much information as we can in lots of different mediums, and then hope that some of it yields dividends.”

He also knows he has an uphill battle ahead of November. Recently, a survey from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that just 18 percent of Americans look to local election administrators for information. “This is a notable decline,” the report states.

“I do find myself often reflecting, what am I doing here? Am I doing it to correct the record? Am I doing it to win an argument?,” Richer said. “I need to keep in mind is winning an argument is not the same as persuading people.”

Richer, a former corporate lawyer, was elected Maricopa County Recorder in November 2020 following his defeat of Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes, who is now secretary of state. As Maricopa County became ground zero of the newly emerging election denial movement, Richer became the focus of attacks, despite having nothing to do with the administration of the election.

After criticizing the so-called election audit approved by the Arizona senate, Richer received a death threat via voicemail, and in 2022 a Missouri man was indicted on federal charges linked to the call. Richer received scores of threatening calls during this period and says the threats came from people in half a dozen states. Many of the callers, he adds, have been arrested for making threats, including a man from Alabama who was arrested just last week.

The accusations of election fraud weren’t just anonymous, however: In 2022, Lake accused Richer of sabotaging her campaign for governor by incorrectly printing 300,000 ballots that were subsequently discounted. Richer sued her; Lake’s lawyers tried to get the lawsuit dismissed in December by claiming their client’s comments about Richer were simply “her opinions about the facts” and therefore protected speech.

Despite this, Richer continues to speak out and continues to tweet. Not everyone hates him: In 2021, he was named Arizonan of the Year by the Arizona Republic. In the same year, The Phoenix New Times named him the Best Republican Politician of the Year for his willingness to speak the truth about the integrity of the state’s election processes.

And he often thinks about what allegations of fraud are worth responding to and amplifying. “At what point do you engage and then risk promoting it to a larger audience? Or do you just let it die a natural death in another four or five hours, because most of the stuff has a pretty short shelf life on social media,” Richer tells WIRED. “The calculus for [responding to Savela’s tweet] was that she's a political actor who works with a political organization that was seemingly trying to spread this to try to hurt people's confidence in the system, so that's why I chose to engage.”

[knottahooker]

“(F)or more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” it adds, referring to Trump. “But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

The plot to overturn the 2020 election shattered presidential norms and culminated in an unthinkable physical assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress met to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Even before that, Trump engaged in an unprecedented pressure campaign toward state election workers and lawmakers, Justice Department officials and even his own vice president to persuade them to throw out the 2020 results.

Smith told reporters that he will seek a “speedy trial” and encouraged members of the public to read the indictment.

“The attack in our nation’s capital on January 6 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy, and as described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies,” Smith said in a brief statement. “Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of a presidential election.”

The indictment alleges that Trump and co-conspirators “exploited” the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by continuing efforts to convince members of Congress to delay the certification of the election.

“As violence ensued, the Defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims,” according to the indictment.

The indictment also says that Trump had deceived many rioters to believe then-Vice President Mike Pence could change the election results to make Trump the victor.

#Trump #january 6