Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election was built on lies.
Beginning on Election Night in November 2020 and continuing into 2023, Trump has delivered a relentless barrage of false claims about what happened in Georgia. These claims ranged from vague proclamations that he actually won the state to specific conspiracy theories that were previously debunked.
Here is a look at the inaccurate things Trump has said:
Falsely claimed he won Georgia: In his speech on Election Night, Trump falsely claimed it was “clear that we have won Georgia” – even though it was actually clear at the time that the result had not been determined and that it was possible for Joe Biden to surpass Trump in the ongoing count.
Trump continued to falsely claim he had won Georgia even after the finalized count showed that Biden had won the state by 11,779 votes – including during the January 2, 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
Falsely claimed there were tens of thousands of underage voters: Trump falsely claimed at a Georgia rally in early January 2021 that “66,000 votes in Georgia were cast by people under the legal voting age.” There is no basis for this figure. Raffensperger has said the actual number of underage voters in the 2020 presidential election was zero.
Falsely claimed there were thousands of dead voters: Trump falsely claimed in 2021 that thousands of Georgia ballots in the 2020 election were cast in the names of dead people. He claimed in the January 2021 call with Raffensperger that “a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”
That number, too, is not even close to accurate. Raffensperger said in 2022 that Georgia officials had found just four such cases.
When the Trump campaign identified specific deceased Georgians the campaign claimed had phony ballots cast in their names, its claims quickly fell apart under scrutiny. For example, CNN spoke in November 2020 to one of the legal Georgia voters the Trump campaign had incorrectly named as a dead voter. The living voter happened to have the same name as a dead person.
Read more of the false claims:
