decided to focus its communication strategy elsewhere.[112] Distancing the RNC from President Trump's false statements was a "regular course of the job before the election," and it "carried through after the election" in relation to President Trump's false claims about the election.[113] Starting at or before the November 19, 2020, press conference, the RNC senior leadership was in agreement that they would not claim that President Trump had won the election,[114] although the RNC "frequently" had to have internal discussions about President Trump's false statements about the election.[115]
According to Michael Reed, then the RNC's deputy chief of staff for communications, "there were conversations amongst [RNC] legal and comms and digital to ensure that anything that was being written by the digital team based off of something President Trump or the Campaign said was something we all were more comfortable with."[116] RNC Chairwoman McDaniel was a part of these conversations.[117]
RNC leadership knew that President Trump was lying to the American people. Yet, they did nothing to publicly distance themselves from his efforts to overturn the election. The RNC's response was merely to tinker around the edges of the fundraising copy but never to fundamentally challenge the one message that remained present in TMAGAC's post-election fundraising copy—President Trump's Big Lie.
In the end, multiple senior RNC staffers approved fundraising emails raising questions about the election results even though they did not know of any evidence about fraud impacting the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. For example, Cassie Docksey stated that she was not aware of any fraud that impacted the results of the Presidential election.[118] Ahrens conceded that "there was not evidence that we [the RNC] had seen that he [President Trump] won the election, that Biden had not won the election."[119]
Similarly, Justin Clark was "not aware of [fraudulent activity . . . to like defraud voters] by an individual or an entity that would have [changed the outcome of an election]."[120] Alex Cannon "did not find or see, in [his] limited ability as one individual . . . evidence that would be sufficient within the time period to change any sort of election results in any of the States."[121]
Nonetheless, the RNC and the Trump Campaign continued to send out hundreds of emails, spreading the Big Lie to and fundraising off of millions of supporters. Even though the RNC had closely held reservations about repeating the most extreme and unsupportable claims of fraud, the RNC stayed the course with a coordinated, single fundraising plan with the Trump Campaign. The RNC privately and quietly softened the most blatantly egregious claims written by its own copywriters but publicly stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and his Big Lie.
