Trump campaign calls for things that have already been done, analyst says 0:54
(CNN) -
At a wild, off-tangent and often controversial press conference led by President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Trump campaign legal team laid out their case for alleged widespread fraud in the elections.
The roughly 90-minute briefing was full of falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
At no point did Trump's legal team offer proof of its widespread fraud allegations.
Jenna Ellis, the campaign's legal advisor, said the group was submitting an "introductory statement" with more to come and called the team an "elite strike force."
Also with the campaign, attorney Sidney Powell made extreme and unsubstantiated claims about alleged interference by Venezuela and George Soros in the US elections.
On multiple occasions, Giuliani made accusations citing people whose identities, he said, could not be disclosed for their own safety.
Many of their specific claims have already been refuted by federal election security experts and a wide range of bipartisan election administrators across the country.
(Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Here's a look at some of the top claims made during the briefing and the facts surrounding them.
Certification in Wayne County
Giuliani said the Trump campaign dropped a case in Michigan because their goal was to get the Wayne County board not to certify the election and that is what they did.
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The facts first
: This is false.
The county's results were certified Tuesday night.
Two Republican Board members initially blocked the vote, but later reversed their decision and voted to certify the election Tuesday night.
They have since submitted affidavits to rescind their vote, but have not filed any lawsuits to try to force the county to call a new meeting.
Since the deadline has passed, the certification still stands.
The board's vice chairman, Democrat Jonathan Kinloch, said Thursday that members' votes cannot be changed after they are cast.
- Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer
'Overvoting' in Michigan
There were no more votes than voters in Michigan 1:25
"One of the reasons that Republicans did not certify the vote in Wayne County, Michigan, was because the excess of votes was so high," Giuliani said.
He added, "what I am describing to you is a massive fraud."
The facts first
: This is false.
What Giuliani called an excessive vote is often referred to as an imbalance where the number of tabulated ballots does not equal the number of people registered to vote at a specific polling place.
Past elections in Michigan, with greater imbalances, have been certified without problems, even in 2016 when Trump won the state, according to Michigan's secretary of state.
Mitt Romney Calls Trump's Attempt to Override Michigan Election 'Undemocratic'
“They certified the vote in 2016 with 80% of Detroit's precincts out of balance.
And yet today 42% were out of balance and yet did not get certified, so clearly there is no point here, ”Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said.
Benson told CNN that it is "quite common" for venues to be out of balance, but "does not indicate any misconduct," adding that "it is more of an accounting, administrative matter."
There are many reasons why a precinct could be out of balance and have a discrepancy between the number of votes cast and the number of people registered in the voting book, according to Chris Thomas, who served as a senior advisor to the Detroit City Clerk. .
Thomas, who has built a decades-long career serving secretaries of state, both Republicans and Democrats, told CNN that overall, through his many years of experience, an imbalance should be viewed as clerical errors rather than fraud.
- Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer
Election observers
Giuliani claimed that more than 600,000 ballots in Pennsylvania "were not inspected, rendering them invalid and worthless."
The facts first
: This is false.
Nothing is illegitimate on those ballots.
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge ruled that the Philadelphia County Board of Elections complied with the law as to how it allowed observers to access the counting process.
The law allows observers to be present, the judge wrote, but they do not have the right to inspect or look over the shoulders of the workers who count the ballots.
The judge ruled that observers in Philadelphia cannot contest the ballots and do not need to inspect each individual signature.
- Tara Subramaniam
Ballots by Mail
Giuliani falsely claimed that mail-in ballots are "prone to fraud."
Facts First
: Election experts have told CNN time and again that mail-in ballots are a safe way to vote and are not subject to widespread fraud.
- Holmes Lybrand
Judge Alito and Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania dismisses Trump lawsuit over vote counting 2:08
At one point, Giuliani suggested that United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito intervened in Pennsylvania and told the state that "any ballot arriving after 8 o'clock on November 3, 2020 should be set aside. and not open.
Facts First
: It is false for Giuliani to claim that Alito ordered counties not to open ballots received after 8 pm on Election Day.
Instead, Alito ordered county boards of elections to follow guidance issued by the Pennsylvania secretary of state, which called for ballots arriving Nov. 4-6 to be segregated and kept separate even if they were counted.
On November 6, the Pennsylvania Republican Party asked the US Supreme Court to order Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to "search, segregate, and take no action related to incoming ballots" after Election Day.
Alito said he would forward the request to the court.
The judges have yet to rule on the Republicans' request for "no action" on the ballots.
Alito, who has jurisdiction over the Pennsylvania region, issued an order on November 6 directing that "all county boards of elections" were ordered to "comply" with the guidelines presented by the Commonwealth clerk, essentially maintaining the status quo.
- Ariane deVogue and Tara Subramaniam
71% inconsistent data
Ellis, a senior legal advisor to the Trump campaign, said Wayne County, Michigan, was not going to certify its results "because 71% of counties have inconsistent data."
Facts First
: This is misleading.
While Ellis did not specify what he meant by inconsistent data, it is likely that he is referring to precincts that are out of balance, where the number of voters recorded in the ballot book does not match the number of votes cast.
According to the Michigan secretary of state's office, 71% of the absentee vote counting locations in Detroit, which is part of Wayne County, were not balanced.
However, the total number of precincts that were not balanced in the city as a whole was much smaller.
Including in-person ballots, 42% of the total precincts in Detroit were not balanced.
The imbalances were part of the reason two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Electors temporarily blocked the certification of the county's results.
The results were finally certified after an agreement that stipulated in part that the Michigan secretary of state would be called upon to conduct a comprehensive audit on specific sites in Detroit that were not balanced.
The clerical errors that result in these imbalances have not stopped past certifications in the county.
In the August primaries, Wayne County certified its results when 72% of the absentee tally boards in Detroit and 46% of the county's total constituencies were not reconciled.
For this election, the Wayne County Canvassing Board has not officially released its final report which will include which county precincts were not balanced.
- Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer
Dominion Voting Systems and Venezuela
Trump team pushes false theory linked to Chávez 2:47
Powell claimed that the widely used voting machines of the voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems featured software created "under the direction" of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to modify its own election results and that the company has ties to the Clinton Foundation and Soros. .
The facts first
: none of this is true.
Dominion has no corporate ties to Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation, or Soros.
Powell and other Trump allies have tried to link Dominion, which sells voting technology that was used in more than two dozen states, to another voting company called Smartmatic.
During the 2020 election, Smartmatic's technology was used only in Los Angeles County and not in any indecisive states, a company spokesperson told CNN.
Smartmatic was founded in Florida by two Venezuelans and provided electoral technology to the Venezuelan government.
Powell posted on social media an alleged affidavit from an anonymous Venezuelan official claiming that Smartmatic software was used to change votes in the country.
But those claims have no evidence and there is no reason to believe that the company's software was created to ensure that Chávez "never lost an election," as Powell claimed.
In reality, the company came out to accuse the Venezuelan government of electoral fraud in 2017.
The biggest problem with this claim is that there is no evidence that Dominion machines used Smartmatic software, as suggested by Powell, and therefore zero connection between Venezuela and the company whose voting machines were actually used in the undecided states in which Trump is focusing.
Both Dominion and Smartmatic have said they are competitors with no corporate ties.
The origin of the claim linking the companies appears to be an intricate corporate transfer: In 2005, Smartmatic acquired a company called Sequoia Voting Systems, but sold it in 2007 after questions from members of Congress about the acquisition by a company linked to Venezuela.
Three years later, Dominion, which was founded as a Canadian company but is now majority-owned by Americans, acquired Sequoia.
Additionally, Smartmatic licensed the Dominion machines for use in the Philippines in 2009, but the contract ended in a lawsuit, Dominion said in its statement.
Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic have corporate ties to the Clintons or Soros, a major Democratic donor.
While Dominion agreed to donate its technology to "emerging democracies" as part of a program run by the Clinton Foundation in 2014, according to the foundation's website, Dominion said in its statement that it does not have "company ownership relationships" with the foundation.
And while the chairman of the board of Smartmatic's parent company is also on the board of a Soros-run foundation, Open Society Foundations, Soros himself is not involved in either company.
-Casey Tolan
Domain and algorithms
In one of the more outlandish claims of the press conference, Powell also said that the software used by Dominion "can set up and run an algorithm that was probably run across the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and deliver them to the President. President Biden.
The facts first
: There is absolutely no evidence that this happened.
Federal officials have said there was no widespread fraud or irregularities during the elections, and most states use paper ballots that can be audited to verify vote totals.
Experts have said those ideas lack factual support.
In particular, states can review and recount paper ballots, which can validate vote totals.
And a joint group of federal, state, local and private election officials called the 2020 election the safest in U.S. history last week.
While some isolated issues with Dominion's technology were reported on election day and night, there have been no credible reports that any issues with the company's machines have affected the vote count.
To claim the possibility of hacking, Powell appeared to cite an investigation by Princeton University professor Andrew Appel, who warned of potential vulnerabilities in voting machines from Dominion and other companies and demonstrated the potential that exists to hack into those machines.
But Appel argued this month that election results can be trusted because of the paper trail backing the vote count.
"Vulnerabilities are not the same as rigged elections, especially when we have paper ballots in almost every state," Appel wrote on his blog last week.
"Currently, the United States uses mainly paper ballots and this is how we can trust the election results, although there are some computer vulnerabilities."
- Casey Tolan
Rudolph giuliani