The 'Big Lie': Sustained False Claims That the 2020 Election Was Stolen
Tier 3Claims Ongoing2020-11-04 to 2024-11-05
Factual Summary
After losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden by 306 to 232 electoral votes and approximately 7 million popular votes, Donald Trump launched a sustained campaign of false claims asserting that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud.
Trump and his allies filed more than 60 post-election lawsuits in state and federal courts. Of those, 61 out of 62 were dismissed or rejected, including cases before judges Trump himself had appointed. Courts found no credible evidence of fraud sufficient to affect the outcome in any state. Approximately 30 were dismissed after hearings on the merits.
On November 12, 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), led by Trump appointee Chris Krebs, issued a joint statement declaring: "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Trump fired Krebs shortly after.
On December 1, 2020, Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, told the Associated Press: "We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." Barr later described the stolen election claims as "bull----."
Specific false claims included allegations that Dominion Voting Systems machines were programmed to switch votes (Dominion later won a $787.5 million defamation settlement against Fox News), that tens of thousands of dead people had voted (investigations found negligibly small numbers), that surveillance video from Atlanta showed hidden ballots (Georgia officials confirmed the bags contained lawfully stored ballots), and that expanded mail-in voting created massive fraud (an AP investigation of more than 25 million ballots found fewer than 475 potential instances). Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to "find" 11,780 votes in a recorded phone call. Raffensperger refused.
All 50 states certified their results. The Electoral College confirmed Biden's victory on December 14, 2020. Congress certified the results on January 7, 2021, following the January 6 Capitol attack. Trump has never conceded the 2020 election.
Primary Sources
1. Campaign Legal Center: Results of Lawsuits Regarding the 2020 Elections: https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections
2. Washington Post: "President Trump's false claims of vote fraud: A chronology": https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/05/president-trumps-false-claims-vote-fraud-chronology/
3. Brennan Center for Justice: "It's Official: The Election Was Secure": https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/its-official-election-was-secure
Corroborating Sources
1. PBS NewsHour: "Exhaustive fact check finds little evidence of voter fraud, but 2020's big lie lives on"
2. NPR: "Debunking Trump and his allies' false claims about the election," November 11, 2020
3. PNAS: "No evidence for systematic voter fraud" (peer-reviewed study): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103619118
Counterarguments and Context
Trump has maintained that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread fraud. He repeated these claims throughout 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, including during his successful 2024 presidential campaign. His legal team, led in part by Rudy Giuliani, was sanctioned by courts for filing frivolous claims. Giuliani was subsequently disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., and ordered to pay $148 million in defamation damages to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he falsely accused of fraud.
Author's Note
This entry documents the pattern of false claims and their rejection by courts, federal officials, and election security agencies. The related criminal proceedings arising from these claims are covered under CRIM-003 (federal indictment) and CRIM-004 (Georgia RICO indictment). The January 6 Capitol attack, which was preceded by these claims, is documented under INCITE-001 and INCITE-002.