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]
