The Republican National Committee sent out a scripted robocall on behalf of its new co-chair Lara Trump, falsely claiming Democrats were guilty of “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.
“We all know the problems,” the RNC call said, according to CNN, which also said the call was sent 145,000 times in the first week of April.
“No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.”
Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who repeatedly defeated Trump in cases over alleged electoral fraud after the 2020 election, said the RNC robocall showed the Republican party to be “more committed to the big lie than ever”.
Donald Trump, who installed his daughter-in-law at the RNC last month, lost the 2020 election conclusively to Joe Biden and was told by close aides including William Barr, his attorney general, and Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, that there was no widespread fraud.
Regardless, Trump pursued his fraud lie through the courts – losing every case – and ultimately by inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.
Impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal, Trump has ridden unprecedented legal jeopardy, including 14 charges related to election subversion, to claim the nomination again.
The RNC did not consistently fundraise off Trump’s stolen election lie before its change of leadership, a process the Guardian recently reported has been “buffeted by staffing problems and operational headaches as [Trump allies] attempt to bring the party apparatus under the control of the Trump campaign”.
But Trump has never stopped broadcasting his lie.
On Friday, he is due to appear at his Florida home with Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, for an event trumpeted as important for Republican party unity but focusing on “election integrity”.
USA Today reported that the two men will announce a bill meant to “elevate the issue of non-citizens voting in federal elections”.
The Bipartisan Policy Center, a group dedicated to creating solutions across party lines, points to research by groups on the right and left of US politics, which says non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare and does not affect election results.
As reported by CNN, the RNC robocall sent in April told recipients: “I’m sure you agree with co-chair [Lara] Trump that we cannot allow the chaos and questions of the 2020 election to ever happen again.”
CNN also detailed Lara Trump’s extensive and recent history of supporting her father-in-law’s electoral fraud lie.
In just one recent instance, at a campaign event in South Carolina in February, she said: “Does anyone actually believe that in 2020, 81 million people were so inspired by a guy [Biden] who could only get 10 people [to attended events] … that he had the most massive turnout in the history of elections? No, we don’t believe that.”
In late March, Trump told NBC the 2020 election was “in the past” but did not disown allegations of a stolen election.
On Wednesday, Trump told Newsmax her father-in-law was the victim of political prosecutions and having “nothing but misinformation and disinformation thrown at him every single day”.
