Analysis | The two-track effort to leverage Trump’s false claims of voter fraud continues to diverge

But Trump and his allies keep trying. In a speech over the weekend, Trump touted that the state of Georgia had “found 35,000 votes,” implying the results in that state were suspect. That claim derives from a story at the far-right blog the Federalist, in which the proof of the “illegal votes” involve an independent analysis suggesting that many Georgians cast votes in Georgia counties other than the ones in which they live. It’s a good example of where the voting process and massive fraud conspiracy tracks overlap, with an (unproven) instance of the former being used to bolster the latter, to the Federalist’s page-view benefit. But it’s not an example of rampant illegal voting of the type Trump claims cost him the election, and which has been rejected by his former attorney general, the leader of his party’s caucus in the Senate, members of his party in Congress, Republicans in state legislatures, executive-level Republican officials in various states and every objective independent observer.