him as a "fighter."[119] Representatives Perry and Jordan had often teamed up to spread lies about the election. The two spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally in front of the Pennsylvania State capitol in Harrisburg, just days after the November election.[120] The pair also pressed their conspiratorial case during interviews with friendly media outlets.[121]
President Trump made a "stream of allegations" during the December 27th call.[122] As reflected in his notes, Donoghue considered the call to be an "escalation of the earlier conversations," with the President becoming more adamant that "we weren't doing our job."[123] President Trump trafficked in "conspiracy theories" he had heard from others, and Donoghue sought to "make it clear to the President these allegations were simply not true."[124] Donoghue sought to "correct" President Trump "in a serial fashion as he moved from one theory to another."[125]
The President returned to the discredited ASOG report, which former Attorney General Barr had already dismissed as complete nonsense. ASOG had claimed—based on no evidence—that the Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan had suffered from a 68 percent error rate. As noted above and in Chapter 1, that was not close to being true.
Bipartisan election officials in Antrim County completed a hand recount of all machine-processed ballots on December 17, 2020, which should have ended the lies about Dominion's voting machines.[126] The net difference between the machine count and the hand recount was only 12 out of 15,718 total votes.[127] The machines counted just one vote more for former Vice President Biden than was tallied during the hand recount.[128] Donoghue informed the President that he "cannot and should not be relying on" ASOG's claim, because it was "simply not true."[129] This did not stop the President from later repeating the debunked allegation multiple times, including during his January 6th speech at the Ellipse.[130]
Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue debunked a "series" of other conspiracy theories offered by President Trump during the December 27th call as well. One story involved a truck driver "who claimed to have moved an entire tractor trailer of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania."[131] There was no truth to the story. The FBI "interviewed witnesses at the front end and the back end of" the truck's transit route, "looked at loading manifests," questioned the truck driver, and concluded that there were no ballots in the truck.[132]
President Trump then returned to the conspiracy theory about voting in Detroit. Former Attorney General Barr had already debunked the claim that a massive number of illegal votes had been dumped during the middle of the night, but the President would not let it go. President Trump alleged that someone "threw the poll watchers out," and "you don't even need to
