Trump using election lies to lay groundwork for challenge if he loses

Donald Trump standing by a large screen that reads, "Too big to rig / Make your plan to vote today" and "SwampTheVoteUSA.com"

By Jill Colvin

Nov. 2, 2024 Updated 9:23 PM PT

NEW YORK — Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork — just as he did in his campaign four years ago — to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses.

He has made election lies central to his campaign, issuing fevered and false warnings about fraud while promising to take retribution against people he sees as standing in his way.

At rally after rally, the Republican urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has repeatedly refused to say whether he will accept the election results regardless of the outcome. And he has falsely claimed that cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims and outrageous theories unsupported by evidence.

“The only thing that can stop us is the cheating. It’s the only thing that can stop us,” he claimed at an event in Arizona Thursday night.

In 2020, Trump declared victory before votes were counted, then launched a legal and political effort to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, leading to the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent effort to prevent Congress from certifying the results.

Democrats fear that even before Tuesday’s race is called, he‘ll repeat such tactics. In Dearborn, Mich., on Friday, he wouldn’t answer a question about those concerns, instead pivoting to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

This year, Trump is backed by a sophisticated operation built by his campaign and the Republican National Committee. The so-called election integrity effort has already filed more than 130 lawsuits and signed up more than 230,000 volunteers who are being trained to deploy as poll watchers and workers across the country on election day.

Here’s a look at Trump’s strategy to sow doubt in this year’s election, and the facts that conflict with his claims:

Alleged voting by noncitizens

THE CLAIM: Trump has said, without evidence, that Democrats have allowed millions of migrants to enter the country illegally so that they can be registered to vote. In an interview with Newsmax in September, he alleged that such efforts were already underway.

“They are working overtime trying to sign people, illegally, to vote in the election,” he asserted. “They’re working overtime to sign people and register people — many of the same people that you just see come across the border. Which is probably their original thought, because why else would they want to destroy our country?”

THE FACTS: It takes years for newcomers to become citizens, and only citizens can legally cast ballots in federal elections. Isolated cases of noncitizens accused of trying to vote — as in the case of a University of Michigan student from China arrested on allegations of casting an illegal ballot — do not reflect a larger conspiracy.

Research has shown that it’s extremely rare for noncitizens to illegally register and cast ballots, and that it’s usually an unintentional misunderstanding when they do.

Questioning of overseas ballots

THE CLAIM: Trump has pointed to Democratic efforts to secure the votes of Americans living abroad as another opportunity for fraud. He’s alleged that his political rivals are “getting ready to CHEAT!” and ”want to “dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military and their families.”

THE FACTS: The former president has himself campaigned for the votes of Americans overseas, promising to end so-called “double taxation” for U.S. citizens who often have to pay taxes in the country where they reside as well as to the U.S. government.

Ominous conspiracy theories

THE CLAIM: Trump has recently suggested, without evidence, that Harris might have access to some kind of secret inside information about the outcome of the election even before all of the ballots are cast.

Since the vice president took a day off from the campaign trail to sit for interviews with Telemundo and NBC, he has repeatedly said, “Maybe she knows something we don’t know.” In Michigan, he suggested there was no way Harris would be campaigning with Beyoncé — one of the biggest stars in the world — if the race were as close as polls suggest.

THE FACTS: There is no apparent evidence of such a conspiracy among Democrats. But Trump fanned fears of his own inside planning at a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden when he looked at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and talked about their “little secret.”

Johnson, before becoming speaker, took the lead in drafting a widely panned brief seeking to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory, and echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories in an effort to explain away Trump’s loss.

Asked after the Madison Square Garden rally about Trump’s reference to a “little secret,” Johnson issued a statement that included the following: “By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one.” (He later told an audience that it related to one of their “tactics on get-out-the-vote,” the Hill reported.) Trump’s campaign issued a statement noting the former president had “done countless tele-rallies” to help bolster Republican congressional candidates.)

Turning to Pennsylvania

THE CLAIM: Trump recently turned his ire on Pennsylvania, a state both his and Harris’ campaigns view as crucial. He asserts that cheating is already underway there.

York County, Pa., he alleges, has “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a third party group.” He also claims that Lancaster County, Pa., has been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person. Really bad ‘stuff.’”

THE FACTS: Lancaster County Dist. Atty. Heather Adams, an elected Republican, has said election workers raised concerns about two sets of voter registration applications — not “votes” — over what she described as numerous similarities. Officials are examining about 2,500 forms. Lancaster officials said some forms contain false names, suspicious handwriting, questionable signatures, incorrect addresses or other problematic details, but did not say they were all written by the same person.

York County Chief Clerk Greg Monskie also confirmed that his county was reviewing suspicious forms. Officials in the state say the discovery of and investigation into the applications — not actual ballots — are evidence that the system is working as it should.

Threats of prosecution

THE CLAIM: Trump has threatened severe consequences for those he accuses of “unscrupulous behavior.” In one social media post making false claims about cheating, he warned about prosecuting those supposedly involved “to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.”

The posts go on to threaten adversaries, including election officials, lawyers and donors, who he says “will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

THE FACTS: Judges, election officials and even William Barr, Trump’s onetime attorney general, have all affirmed that there was no widespread cheating in the 2020 election.

If he’s elected again, Trump has vowed to go after rivals he has deemed “enemies from within,” including saying he would appoint a special prosecutor to target President Biden. That’s more than a theoretical threat given that when he was president, Trump repeatedly pressed for investigations into perceived political adversaries.

Though the Justice Department does have checks in place meant to ward off political influence, Trump could appoint allies to the agency who might be willing to open cases at his behest.

Colvin writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Christine Fernando in Chicago, Adriana Gomez Licon in Dearborn, Mich., and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.