Trump Claims ‘Voter Fraud Beyond What Anyone Can Believe’ in Michigan, Pushes for Audit

October 9, 2021 2020 election

Former President Donald Trump pushed for an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Michigan Saturday, claiming voter fraud in the state was “beyond what anyone can believe.”

In a statement, he called on his supporters to attend a rally on October 12 “where Patriots will demand a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Scam.”

Trump lost Michigan to President Joe Biden by nearly three points, and no evidence of widespread voter fraud has been presented.

“Anyone who cares about our Great Country should attend, because unless we look to the past and fix what happened, we won’t have a future or a Country,” he wrote.

Michigan was been viewed as a Democratic-leaning state until Trump flipped it red in 2016. The last time it had voted for a Republican for president was in 1988. In 2020, Biden flipped Michigan back, winning 50.6 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 47.8 percent.

Michigan lawmakers introduced a bill in June that would have created a bipartisan board to hire an outside group to audit 10 percent of the precincts in each county and 20 percent of the precincts in Democratic-leaning Detroit, The Detroit News reported.

If a bill mandating an audit were to pass, it would face resistance from Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said in March that 250 random audits across the state confirmed the accuracy and integrity of the 2020 presidential election, WJRT-TV reported.

She called on political leaders to “tell their constituents the truth, that our election was the most secure in history, and the results accurately reflect the will of Michigan’s voters.”

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump and other conservatives have pushed the unfounded narrative the election was stolen in key states. They have pushed for election audits in several swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.

In Arizona, a widely-condemned audit in Maricopa County upheld Biden’s victory in the traditionally conservative state. The audit found that Trump lost the county by a larger margin than the initial count found.

Following the release of the results, Trump falsely claimed at a rally in Georgia on September 25 that the audit found widespread fraud.

“We won at the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn’t believe,” Trump told the crowd in Perry. “They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona, when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.”

Trump called on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to conduct a forensic audit of the election results in the Lone Star State, where he won by about six points. The same day, the Texas secretary of state announced an audit of Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin counties, prompting criticism that Abbott is taking orders from the former president.

The audits have been dismissed by election experts as being partisan. Larry Moore, the founder and retired chief executive officer of the Clear Ballot Group, slammed the Arizona audit, calling out Cyber Ninjas, the company that conducted it, as having no experience.