No evidence of fraud in 2020 US election, experts testify at House hearing News
© WikiMedia (Phil Roeder)
No evidence of fraud in 2020 US election, experts testify at House hearing

A group of legal and political experts Monday testified before the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that former President Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election are unsubstantiated.

The second day of publicized hearings included testimony from Trump senior advisor Jason Miller, who testified that former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani encouraged Trump to declare victory on the night of the election and told Trump that “they were stealing it from us” despite poor results.

Trump Campaign Manager Bill Steipen reported that someone told Trump that “thousands” of illegal voters may have cast ballots, but that the claim was based on data that turned out to be from legal overseas voters. He also testified that the Trump campaign’s approach to the election results was not “honest and professional.” Trump lawyer Matt Morgan relayed that law firms began to “disengage” from the Trump campaign amid allegations of voter fraud as they did not feel comfortable advancing those arguments.

In a pretaped interview, Attorney General William Barr explicitly disavowed claims of fraud and said that all claims of fraud brought to him were so baseless that Trump would be “detached from reality” if he believed them.

The former US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia B. J. Pak and former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt said that they both investigated allegations of voter fraud in their respective areas and both testified before the committee that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

Legal expert Benjamin Ginsberg, who represented Republicans in election disputes including Bush v. Gore, said that it would not have been possible for Trump to make up his 10,000 vote deficit in Arizona, or any other state, with a normal recount. He also testified that in all of the court decisions he reviewed regarding Trump’s claims, the Trump campaign did not make cogent claims of fraud. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren submitted excerpts from judicial decisions dismissing the Trump campaign’s claims, including one from Judge David Carter which said that the legal challenges were a “coup in search of a legal theory.”  Lofgren also drew attention to the fact that multiple Trump lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, now face disciplinary action over baseless claims.

The committee will hold their next televised hearing Wednesday.

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