Yesterday’s press conference was proof that President Trump’s team’s effort to overturn the results of the presidential election in several states has become an unserious misinformation campaign. But for those willing to give lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell the benefit of the doubt, let’s take a look at the evidence coming from the one place that matters: the courtroom.
For starters, the argument Giuliani and Powell have been making in public — millions of votes were fabricated and/or switched using voting software — is not the argument Trump’s lawyers have been making in court. Trump’s lawyers have not even tried to allege massive widespread fraud or voter alteration. Instead, Trump’s legal team has accused various Democratic-controlled cities of harvesting ballots, intimidating Republican monitors, and counting votes for Trump as votes for Biden, among other things.
Almost every single one of these lawsuits has been tossed by the courts, a few by Trump-appointed judges. The reason is obvious: Trump’s team has not provided substantive evidence backing its claims.
In Michigan, a judge tossed one of the Trump campaign’s lawsuits because it was based on one affidavit from a poll watcher in Detroit, who alleged she was told about a date on a ballot being improperly altered. In other words, the lawsuit was based on nothing more than hearsay. The witness did not even see this irregularity occur herself. She just heard about it from someone else.
Also, in Michigan, it seems that Trump’s team mistakenly filed an affidavit alleging voter irregularities in the Great Lakes state when the data that addresses these “anomalies and red flags” was actually based on information from Minnesota. Apparently, someone involved in this process “confused ‘MI’ for Minnesota with ‘MI’ for Michigan,” as Powerline’s John Hinderaker pointed out. In other words, the entire legal basis of this affidavit just fell apart.
In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign abandoned its claims of widespread voter fraud because it could not prove that enough ballots had been allegedly tainted to overcome President-elect Joe Biden’s lead in the state. Giuliani even admitted before a judge that the campaign was not alleging fraud. Why? Because he could face serious consequences for making an assertion that he knows is not true under oath.
And in Georgia, a Trump-appointed judge ruled against Lin Wood, a prominent attorney who was suing in his personal capacity as a Georgia voter, because the evidence of voting improprieties was limited, isolated, and in no way amounted to the kind of widespread wrongdoing that would justify a federal judge stepping in to alter the state’s election results.
There’s much more where that came from. All of these court filings, rulings, and many of the affidavits are publicly accessible. And each shows the same pattern: half-baked assertions, insubstantial evidence, and last-minute changes.
Beyond the courtroom, the pattern is the same. Giuliani and Powell argued yesterday that Democratic cities, such as Philadelphia, were responsible for harvesting ballots and relied upon Dominion Voting Systems to stack the odds against Trump. But, compared to past Republican campaigns, Trump overperformed in the cities. Where he struggled was in the suburbs, in which there are just as many Republican voters, volunteers, and poll watchers as there are Democrats.
On the topic of Dominion Voting Systems, it is important to set a few things straight. First, this system is used widely in the U.S. by Republican and Democratic states alike. In fact, Florida is one state that used Dominion’s software, and Trump won this state by a much larger margin than predicted. The same is true in Ohio. And in Georgia, which also uses Dominion, a by-hand recount confirmed Biden’s margin of victory. If there had been serious tabulating or counting errors caused by voting software, Georgia’s extensive by-hand recount would have found them.
I point all of this out to say that our posture should be one of skepticism. To be sure, the process is still working itself out, and the Trump campaign still has time to make its case and provide the bombshell evidence that Giuliani and Powell claim to have. But until that case is made, and until that evidence is provided, Trump’s team has given voters absolutely no reason to believe that a massive voter fraud conspiracy is at work.
So the question to those who believe Trump’s claims is this: What happens if Powell doesn’t provide the “Kraken” of evidence she is supposedly sitting on? Why, if she has this evidence, is the Trump campaign not alleging widespread voter fraud in court? And why, if Giuliani and Powell are so hesitant to show their hand to the media, are they constantly holding press conferences and appearing on television shows?
I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong. If what Giuliani and Powell are alleging is true, everyone ought to be glad it came to the surface. But something about their claims just is not adding up, and it’s time to admit as much.
