Indeed, this is exactly what Steve Bannon described when he said President Trump would "take advantage" of the Democrats' "natural disadvantage" on election night.[44]
In the ensuing days and weeks, President Trump often referred to "dumps" of votes that were injected into the counting process.[45] His supporters latched onto these false claims.[46] There were no "dumps" of votes—just tallies of absentee ballots as they were reported by jurisdictions throughout the country in a fully transparent process.[47] These batches of ballots included votes for both Trump and Biden. The late-reported votes favored the former Vice President, just as President Trump's campaign advisors said they would, particularly in primarily Democratic cities.[48]
Attorney General Bill Barr recognized immediately that the "Red Mirage" was the basis for President Trump's erroneous claim of fraud. "[R]ight out of the box on election night, the President claimed that there was major fraud underway," Barr said. "I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence."[49] President Trump's claim "seemed to be based on the dynamic that, at the end of the evening, a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote counts in certain states, and that seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud."[50]
President Trump knew about the Red Mirage. He chose to lie about it repeatedly—even after being directly informed that his claims were false. This was often the case in the post-election period. The President consciously disregarded facts that did not support his Big Lie.
1.5 POST-ELECTION: PRESIDENT TRUMP REPLACES HIS CAMPAIGN TEAM
President Trump's campaign leadership, including Bill Stepien (the campaign's manager) and Justin Clark (the campaign's deputy manager), supported President Trump, and were willing to pursue recounts and other standard post-election litigation, but they were not willing to promote baseless conspiracy theories.[51] Stepien and others characterized this group as "Team Normal."[52]
Less than two weeks after the election, President Trump pushed "Team Normal" aside because its members didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. In their place, Trump promoted Rudy Giuliani and his associates, men and women who spread baseless and extreme claims of election fraud. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, recruited several investigators and lawyers to assist him.[53] Giuliani's team included Jenna Ellis, Bernard Kerik, Boris Epshteyn, Katherine Friess, and Christina Bobb.[54] Ellis functioned as
