Trump renews baseless claims of election cheating, pairing 2020 lies with fresh threats
- Former President Trump, with no evidence, made fresh allegations about cheating in the 2024 election.
- Elections experts condemned the rhetoric, calling it unfounded and an intimidation tactic.
With days left in the presidential race, former President Trump has once again questioned U.S. election integrity — pairing long debunked lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him with equally baseless claims of fresh cheating.
In a post Friday on his social media platform Truth Social, the Republican presidential nominee wrote that there was “rampant Cheating and Skulduggery” in 2020; that he and his allies are watching closely for similar problems in the current race; and that, if he wins, those involved in such “unscrupulous behavior” will be “sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Trump’s remarks echoed claims he has made without proof that U.S. elections have been corrupted, drawing renewed condemnation from election experts.
“Sadly we have seen this playbook before,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is fighting legal challenges to voter access initiatives and protections nationwide.
“Trump is doubling down on setting the groundwork to question and try to overturn the election if it doesn’t go his way,” Lakin said. “His threats of prosecution sound [like] authoritarianism and should concern all who care about preserving our democratic institutions.”
Former President Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results swung back into focus in the 2024 presidential race after it was raised as an issue by Gov. Tim Walz at the vice presidential debate and by Special Counsel Jack Smith in a new federal court filing.
Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said it was important not to repeat Trump’s claims but to refute them, because they are not grounded in fact and undermine the electoral system by driving down trust and participation among voters.
“Not only are these lies, but there is every reason to have confidence in the system, and the only way to make the system work is participating in it,” Morales-Doyle said.
He said that while the election system has been tested heavily in recent years — including by Trump and his followers, who have faced criminal charges for trying to subvert the last presidential vote — it has shown itself to be “actually quite strong and resilient.”
“Voters should know they can trust our elections, their votes are safe, and we will have results we can trust after Nov. 5,” Morales-Doyle said.
Neither Trump’s campaign nor Kamala Harris’ responded to requests for comment Friday. The Democratic nominee has previously said Trump’s 2020 election denial proves he’s unfit for office.
Some experts said Trump’s remarks were particularly brazen given it is Trump and his supporters who have been credibly accused of trying to overturn an election, including by storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many are serving prison terms for crimes related to that effort.
Special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing a case against Trump on allegations of a sweeping criminal conspiracy to deny and subvert the 2020 election.
Trump and his allies went to great lengths to find proof of substantive election fraud or irregularities in 2020 but failed. State election officials, independent election experts and most Americans agree today that President Biden’s victory was legitimate.
Trump then “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” Smith alleged in a filing last month detailing allegations that Trump had conducted a “pressure campaign” targeting GOP leaders, election officials and election workers in states where he lost, in an effort to change their results.
The filing also accuses Trump of personally setting into motion and monitoring a plan to have fake slates of electors cast state electoral votes for him instead of Joe Biden; and of continuing his “stream of disinformation” Jan. 6 by falsely suggesting then-Vice President Mike Pence could halt the certification of Biden’s victory.
Harris and Trump went to Texas trying to sway undecided voters by focusing on the key issues of reproductive freedom and border security.
Trump also was charged by Georgia prosecutors with trying to subvert the state’s 2020 election.
Trump has called the cases bogus, and Smith’s case a “SCAM.”
In his post Friday, Trump said those facing “legal exposure” in his threatened crackdown would include lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and “corrupt election officials.”
Morales-Doyle, of NYU’s Voting Rights Program, said Trump’s warnings were particularly alarming given they were paired with his meritless claims about 2020.
“It is very troubling to hear someone suggest that they would use prosecutorial power that way and go after people for what I have to assume would be political purposes — because we know that all of the statements about fraud in our elections that he is making are false,” he said.
Morales-Doyle has raised similar concerns about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, saying it promotes the idea of conservatives using the Justice Department to go after political rivals, including those who support voter access measures.
He called such ideas “appalling.”
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