On election night 2020, the election returns were reported in almost exactly the way that Stepien and other Trump Campaign experts predicted, with the counting of mail-in and absentee ballots gradually diminishing President Trump's perceived lead. As the evening progressed, President Trump called in his campaign team to discuss the results. Stepien and other campaign experts advised him that the results of the election would not be known for some time, and that he could not truthfully declare victory.[33] "It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots—ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days."[34]
Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller told the Select Committee that he argued against declaring victory at that time as well, because "it was too early to say one way [or] the other" who had won.[35] Stepien advised Trump to say that "votes were still being counted. It's too early to tell, too early to call the race but, you know, we are proud of the race we run—we ran and we, you know, think we're—think we're in a good position" and would say more in the coming days.[36]
President Trump refused, and instead said this in his public remarks that evening: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election . . . . We want all voting to stop."[37] And on the morning of November 5th, he tweeted "STOP THE COUNT!"[38]Halting the counting of votes at that point would have violated both State and Federal laws.[39]
According to testimony received by the Select Committee, the only advisor present who supported President Trump's inclination to declare victory was Rudolph Giuliani, who appeared to be inebriated.[40] President Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, who had earlier left the election night gathering, perceived the President’s statement this way:
[R]ight out of the box on election night, the President claimed that there was major fraud underway. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence. He claimed there was major fraud. And it 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. And I didn’t think much of that, because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night. . . .[41]
President Trump's decision to declare victory falsely on election night and, unlawfully, to call for the vote counting to stop, was not a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated. The Committee has assembled a range of
