The executive summary of the House Jan. 6 committee’s report documents how then-President Donald Trump was repeatedly warned by those closest to him — Cabinet members, campaign officials and even family members — that claims he had lost his reelection due to fraud were false. But Trump spread those lies anyway.
“This was not him hearing this from Joe Biden’s spokesman on MSNBC,” David Becker, co-author of “The Big Truth,” a book about the damage of Trump’s election lies, said in an interview.
Trump’s lies about his loss in the 2020 presidential election sparked the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and have helped fuel millions of dollars in donations to the Republican former president. Here are details showing he was told the truth about his loss and chose instead to lie about it.
PLANNING THE LIE AHEAD OF TIME
The Jan. 6 committee has made clear that Trump long planned to claim victory, whether he actually won or not. His allies were boasting of how they could try to fool the public to make it seem that he had won reelection. The committee cites correspondence from Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch to the White House in October 2020 in which Fitton urges Trump to say after polls close: “We had an election. I won.”