Michigan Republicans Are Brutally Frank on Trump Claims

A Senate Oversight Committee in the Michigan Legislature has reached conclusions about the election fraud claims from former President Trump's camp, including Rudy Giuliani, and issued its report. It's a point-by-point takedown that includes criticism of the people who made the false claims, the New York Times reports. For example, in addressing the claims of fraud involving vote-counting machines pushed by MyPillow boss Mike Lindell, the report said, "this narrative is ignorant of multiple levels of the actual election process." The committee mostly avoids mentioning Trump by name, per a Washington Post analysis, though it's direct about some claims that came from him. One is Trump's argument that a "massive" number of votes in Antrim County were switched from Trump to President Biden. An investigation showed that those making the claims are "in a position of zero credibility," the panel wrote, and suggests the state's attorney general launch an investigation of them for spreading false information.

Giuliani took a shot over his claim that some counties had more votes than voters. "The affidavit cited several townships in Minnesota, not Michigan," the panel wrote. And regardless of where the townships are, Minnesota data confirmed the claim was false. Although the panel wrote, "This committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud," it did suggest changes such as restricting absentee voting and the availability of drop boxes for absentee voting. Michigan's Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, suggested Republicans, given the report, "cease their attempts to deceive citizens with misinformation and abandon legislation based on the lies that undermine our democracy." Another example: Trump said 17,000 or so ballots "were cast by dead people." The committee was given more than 200 examples in Wayne County. Only two ballots appeared to have been cast by a deceased voter. One turned out to be a clerical error involving a man with the same name as his father, and the other was cast by a woman who voted early and died four days before the election. (Trump told the Justice Department there was a coverup about voting machines in Michigan.)