Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol/Chapter 1/Section 1.6
1.6 PRESIDENT TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN TEAM TOLD HIM HE LOST THE ELECTION AND THERE WAS NO SIGNIFICANT FRAUD
President Trump's campaign team quickly realized that none of the significant fraud claims were real. Bill Stepien testified that, as of November 5th, the Trump Campaign had not found any proof of fraudulent activity. There were "allegations and reports," but "nothing hard [and] fast" that drew the results of the election into question.[57]
The Trump Campaign continued to investigate claims of fraud into the second week after the election. According to Stepien, as people shared "wild allegations" with the President, the campaign team was forced to review the facts and then serve as a "truth telling squad" to the President regarding why the claims "didn't prove to be true."[58] For example, Stepien recalled someone alleging that thousands of illegal votes had been cast in Arizona. That wasn't true. The votes had been submitted by overseas voters (such as military deployed or stationed abroad) who were obviously eligible to participate in the election.[59]
Alex Cannon was a lawyer for the Trump Campaign and previously worked for the Trump Organization. After the election, Cannon was tasked with looking into allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election—including the claim that thousands of ineligible votes had been cast in Arizona.[60] Cannon recalled that Vice President Pence asked him what he was finding. "And I said that I didn't believe we were finding it, or I was not personally finding anything sufficient to alter the results of the election," Cannon responded. Vice President Pence thanked him.[61]
Cannon reported his assessment to Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, as well. In mid to late-November 2020, Meadows asked Cannon what his investigation had turned up. "And I remember sharing with him that we weren't finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states," Cannon told Meadows. "So there is no there, there?" Meadows replied.[62]
Jason Miller, a senior advisor to the Trump Campaign, pushed claims of election fraud in public. In private, however, Miller says that he told President Trump a different story, informing him numerous times that there was not enough election fraud to have changed the election:
Miller: My understanding is that I think there are still very valid questions and concerns with the rules that were changed under the guise of COVID, but, specific to election day fraud and irregularities, there were not enough to overturn the election.
Committee Staff: And did you give your opinion on that to the President?
Miller: Yes.
Committee Staff: What was his reaction when you told him that?
Miller: "You haven't seen or heard"—I'm paraphrasing, but—"you haven't seen or heard all the different concerns and questions that have been raised."
Committee Staff: How many times did you have this conversation with the President?
Miller: Several. I couldn't put a specific number on it, though.
Committee Staff: But more than one?
Miller: Correct.[63]
Matthew Morgan, the Trump Campaign's top lawyer, came to a similar conclusion. Nearly two months after the election, on January 2nd, Morgan met with the Vice President's staff. According to Morgan, the consensus in the room was that even if all the claims of fraud and irregularities were "aggregated and read most favorably to the campaign … it was not sufficient to be outcome determinative."[64]
As far as the Trump Campaign's professional leadership was concerned, there was no evidence that the election had been "stolen" from President Trump. To the contrary, they had seen ample evidence that President Trump simply lost—and told the President so.
On November 6th, Jared Kushner arranged for the senior campaign staff to brief President Trump in the Oval Office on the state of the race.[65] Since election day, Matt Oczkowski, the Campaign's leading data expert, had tracked voting returns in the swing States to analyze the campaign's odds of success.[66] Miller texted such updates on data from key States to Meadows.[67] The Trump Campaign's data did not add up to victory. Oczkowski "delivered to the President in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose" A non-free image has been removed from this page.
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the election.[68] There were not enough outstanding votes in the battleground States for President Trump to overcome Biden's lead. President Trump disagreed and insisted that he would still prevail through legal challenges.[69]
But the data did not lie.
On November 7th, the Associated Press called Pennsylvania and the overall presidential election for former Vice President Biden.[70] At that point, a small team of the President's campaign advisors including Stepien met with the President and told him that his path to victory was virtually non-existent.[71] The campaign team conveyed to the President that his chance of success was only "5, maybe 10 percent," which Stepien explained to the Committee was a "very, very, very bleak" assessment.[72]
In retrospect, the campaign's estimate of a 5 to 10 percent chance of winning, as of November 7th, was far too optimistic. In one of the most favorable possible scenarios, for example, President Trump and his team would need to win recounts in Arizona and Georgia, while also prevailing in litigation challenging absentee or vote by mail ballots in Wisconsin, or possibly Michigan or Pennsylvania.[73] But the election wasn't even close enough to trigger automatic recounts in Arizona or Georgia.
The narrowest margin of total votes between the two candidates was in Arizona, where former Vice President Biden won by more than 10,000 votes. This may seem like a small number of votes, but it was more than enough to avoid an automatic recount. As Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican elections lawyer, explained to the Select Committee, "the 2020 election was not close."[74] Previous campaigns had successfully challenged vote differentials in the hundreds—not thousands—of votes.[75] Ginsberg explained, "you just don't make up those sorts of numbers in recounts."[76] Georgia performed a hand recount of all the ballots anyway, confirming within weeks of the election that Biden had won the State.[77] Also, by January 6th, Arizona and New Mexico had conducted statutory post-election audits of voting machines or randomly-selected, representative samples of ballots at the State- or county-level that affirmed the accuracy of their election results.[78]
Chris Stirewalt, who led the elections desk at Fox News at the time, concurred with Ginsberg's analysis. Asked what President Trump's odds of victory were as of November 7th, Stirewalt replied: "None."[79]
Meanwhile, the Trump Campaign continued to crunch the numbers. On the morning of November 12th, Oczkowski circulated among top campaign advisors a presentation describing what happened in each of the battleground States the campaign was monitoring.[80] This analysis by the data team examined the turnout and margins on a county-by-county basis in a dozen States while also analyzing demographic changes that impacted the results.[81] Among the States were Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin.[82] Oczkowski's team determined that President Trump lost each of those six States because Biden had performed better than President Trump in certain areas like population centers or suburbs.[83] Yet, in the weeks that followed, President Trump and his new legal team—the "clown car"—went to great lengths to challenge the results of the election in these six states, spreading multiple conspiracy theories.
The voting data told a clear story: President Trump lost. But, regardless of the facts, the President had no intention of conceding defeat.
On election night, President Trump and Rudy Giuliani agreed that the President should just declare victory—even though he had no basis for doing so. Giuliani also told the Select Committee that President Trump asked him on November 4th to take over his campaign's legal operation.[84] Giuliani thought the only way that it would work would be for the President to call the existing campaign team to announce Giuliani's takeover because, in Giuliani's words, "they are going to be extraordinarily resentful, because they don't like me already, and I don't trust them."[85] He said that the President agreed.[86]
Although Giuliani wouldn't assume leadership of the Campaign's legal operations until mid-November, the former New York City mayor quickly began to butt heads with "Team Normal."
On November 6th, Giuliani and his team met with the Trump Campaign's leadership at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.[87]
"Team Normal" was not impressed. Stepien told the Select Committee the campaign team was concerned that Giuliani would be a distraction to them and to President Trump.[88] When Giuliani suggested traveling to Pennsylvania to assist in the campaign's efforts, the campaign team "didn't dissuade him from doing so."[89] After just 10 to 15 minutes in the conference room, Stepien and other staffers left the meeting.[90]
That same day, President Trump discussed the Campaign's legal strategy in the Oval Office with Giuliani, Clark, and Matt Morgan, the Trump Campaign's General Counsel.[91] Prior to the election, Morgan was responsible for the Campaign's litigation strategy.[92] Morgan and his team filed lawsuits challenging the changes States made to voting practices during the coronavirus pandemic.[93] Morgan also studied previous elections to determine the types of cases that were likely to succeed.[94] Clark described how the Campaign's original legal strategy was based on his general theory for election cases: "to look at what do you think, what do you know, and what can you prove" and then determine which cases to file from there.[95]
Giuliani had other ideas and advocated to President Trump that he be put in charge of the Campaign's legal operation so that he could pursue his preferred strategy.[96] "Mr. Giuliani didn't seem bound by those cases or by those precedents. He felt he could press forward on anything that he thought was wrong with the election and bring a strategy around that," Morgan explained.[97] "Rudy was just chasing ghosts," Clark said.[98] Morgan and Clark excused themselves from the meeting because it "was going nowhere."[99]
The next day, November 7th, Giuliani held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He immediately began making outlandish claims, arguing that the Democrats had conspired to steal the election. "As you know from the very beginning, mail-in ballots were a source of some degree of skepticism, if not a lot of skepticism, as being innately prone to fraud," Giuliani said. "Those mail-in ballots could have been written the day before by the Democratic Party hacks that were all over the Convention Center."[100] Giuliani offered no evidence to support his shocking and baseless allegation. Echoes of President Trump's relentless campaign against mail-in balloting, and his decision to exploit the Red Mirage, were easy to hear.
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On November 10th, Giuliani and Kerik met with President Trump in the Oval Office to discuss their investigation into voter fraud. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and White House Senior Advisor Eric Herschmann were also in attendance. After Giuliani's presentation, President Trump asked Cipollone whether he had spoken to Attorney General Barr about the allegations of fraud.[101] One day before, Barr had issued a memorandum outlining a shift in DOJ policy that allowed Federal prosecutors to investigate claims of voting irregularities without waiting for the results to be certified.[102] President Trump's question was an early indication that he was going to pressure the DOJ to endorse his phony fraud claims.
Days later, Giuliani and Justin Clark engaged in a screaming match during a meeting in the Oval Office.[103] Giuliani was urging President Trump to file a lawsuit in Georgia, but Clark pointed out that a hand recount was already being conducted and argued it was better to wait.[104] Giuliani told President Trump that Clark was lying to him.[105] A formal changing of the guard would follow.
On November 14th, President Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani was now the head of his campaign's legal team.[106] "Team Normal" saw drastic changes to their roles on the newly-structured campaign team—some self-imposed—and many outside law firms that had signed up to support the campaign's legal efforts disengaged completely.[107]
"I didn't think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time," Stepien explained. "This wasn't a fight that I was comfortable with," he added.[108]
On the day the leadership change was announced, Giuliani participated in a "surrogate" briefing to coordinate messaging by Trump loyalists during their media appearances.[109] Giuliani announced that the messaging strategy should be "to go hard on Dominion/Smartmatic, bringing up Chavez and Maduro."[110] Giuliani claimed that additional lawsuits would soon be filed "to invalidate upwards of 1M ballots."[111]
Consistent with the messaging advanced by the new campaign team, President Trump in mid-November remained dug-in, still refusing to concede defeat. President Trump continued to insist that he was cheated out of victory, endorsing one wild conspiracy theory after another to deny the simple fact that he lost.