Inside the Creation of Trump's Stolen Election Myth

What you need to know before he spews his garbage tonight.

Ahead of Thursday’s Oval Office address, Trump is expected to recycle debunked claims about the 2020 election. ProPublica’s 2022 investigation into the origins of the “Big Lie” found every major fraud claim from 2020 followed an identical pattern:

1) An unvetted claim surfaces

2) So-called experts/investigators tied to “election integrity” activists supporting Trump review it

3) The claim is deemed false or not credible

4) It is promoted anyway as proof Trump didn’t lose

5) When publicly debunked, its promoters move on to the next claim.

That pattern is repeating in 2026 – visible in the FBI’s Fulton County ballot seizure, and, per MS NOW, in the White House meeting held Monday to prepare Thursday’s address, which reportedly focused on “Chinese and Venezuelan government efforts to influence the 2020 election, along with the security of U.S. voting machines” – the same theories the March 2021 National Intelligence Council review deemed “not credible.”

Stay with us. This will be a longer post, by necessity, due to the sheer amount and complexity of the many false claims Trump and his allies have tried to use to advance his stolen election myth.

The bigger picture: Thursday is a desperate escalation

Trump has been trying to seize control over elections since he took office. His March 2025 executive order and March 2026 mail-voting order both attempted to hand the executive branch new authority over voter registration and how states run elections – key provisions of both were blocked in court.

The SAVE Act has faced many setbacks in Congress, failing several times – September 2024, March 2026, and June 2026.

Trump’s push for red states to redraw maps mid-decade hasn’t produced the House cushion Republicans seek, even factoring in Louisiana v. Callais – the Voting Rights Act case that Trump advisors told RNC donors in December 2025 “could be transformational for Republicans and “upend the political map.”

With every institutional lever short of an emergency EO having failed to deliver a safe House map, Thursday’s address reads as the kickoff of the next phase – national-emergency EO, federalized election oversight, or federal agents at the polls. It’s happening because Trump and his allies are desperate and running out of tools to affect the outcome of a free and fair November election.

The culmination of two-year effort advancing an emergency EO

Thursday’s address is the visible escalation of a coordinated campaign – publicly documented – by the Election Integrity Network (EIN) and allied activists to build the legal and political predicate for a national-emergency executive order to takeover state-run elections, working with officials the network has helped place inside DHS, DOJ, ODNI, and the White House.

• March 2025 – Heather Honey, then an EIN leader, tells right-wing activists on a recorded organizing call that the administration could declare a “national emergency” based on an “actual investigation” of 2020 and gain powers to “take these other steps without Congress and… mandate that states do things.” First reported by NYT (Berzon/Corasaniti, Oct. 22, 2025). Honey was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at DHS by August 2025.

• Sept. 2, 2025 – Cleta Mitchell on Washington Watch with Tony Perkins articulates the legal predicate: the president’s authority over elections is limited “except that where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States… then I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.” Mediaite writeup.

• Feb. 19, 2026 – 30-person summit convened by Michael Flynn, sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy. Attendees included WH lawyer Kurt Olsen, DHS’s Heather Honey, CISA’s Marci McCarthy, ODNI’s Clay Parikh, former DOJ election-litigation lead Mac Warner, Cleta Mitchell, Peter Ticktin, and Patrick Byrne. Attendees urged Trump to declare a national emergency, ban voting machines, and end mail-in ballots. Organizer Will Huff told ProPublica that Olsen agreed to take the group’s “consensus” back to Trump: “It’s got to be a national emergency.” ProPublica (Feb. 28, 2026).

• Feb. 26, 2026 – WaPo (Arnsdorf) reports on a 17-page draft executive order circulated by pro-Trump activists who “say they are in coordination with the White House.” The draft uses a claim that China interfered in 2020 to declare a national emergency to ban voting machines and “unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.” ProPublica separately reported summit attendee Peter Ticktin worked on a draft EO along those lines.

• June 29, 2026 – Steve Bannon on War Room (Media Matters): the SAVE Act path is closed, national emergency EO is the only remaining option. Names John Solomon and Bill Pulte as building the “predicate,” says the case would need to be made on national-security grounds – “I think that case can be made.”

• July 9, 2026 – Trump purges the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) so the federal election agency is legally paralyzed four months before the midterms.

• July 11, 2026 – Reuters reports that the White House, ODNI, and DHS spent months looking for ways to bypass the EAC and use emergency powers to force changes to voting machines. As early as fall 2025, ODNI drafted a recommendation for Trump to declare a national emergency and stand up a federal task force that could compel states to “address vulnerabilities in voting systems.”

• July 14, 2026 – MS NOW reports that Monday’s White House prep meeting for Thursday focused on “Chinese and Venezuelan government efforts to influence the 2020 election, along with the security of U.S. voting machines” – the same conspiracy theories the March 2021 National Intelligence Council review deemed “not credible.” The same reporting notes that the White House’s decision not to release the IC’s own conclusions has, over the past several months, kept CISA and other agencies from working with states and localities to remediate real voting-system vulnerabilities.

Venezuela–Dominion lies

A newer strand of the same debunked theory claims Venezuelan officials who rigged elections for Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro are secretly running U.S. voting-machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic. It circulated in denier circles for years, but gained new life after the U.S. military’s January 3 capture of Maduro. Election deniers are now explicitly tying it to DNI’s anticipated report and an expected national-emergency executive order that would invoke Article II “commander-in-chief” powers to bypass courts and states. Despite what is asserted on Thursday, the Trump administration lacks any constitutional authority to unilaterally alter election laws or bypass Congress.

Patrick Byrne and Gary Berntsen (a self-described former CIA officer) reportedly briefed Trump’s team on the theory before the Maduro operation. A September 2025 “Venezuelan whistleblower” declaration filed in Tina Peters’s election-fraud case made similar claims, and a judge threw it out.

Commentators Emerald Robinson and Lara Logan have amplified the claim; Trump himself has shared related posts. Mike Lindell’s “Election Crime Bureau” released a roughly 800-page report in June 2026 repeating the Venezuela claims alongside the debunked Dominion/Smartmatic theories.

The 2020 origin – Leamsy Salazar (ex-Chávez security chief telling Sidney Powell’s team Dominion “purchased” Venezuelan vote-rigging software) – was debunked by Trump’s own campaign staff within a day, which concluded Dominion had no company ties to Venezuela and terminated its contract with Smartmatic in 2012. Central to four Powell lawsuits (AZ, MI, WI, GA) – all failed.

Other recycled claims that may appear Thursday

• Oltmann / “Eric Coomer antifa call” – A Denver podcaster claimed he infiltrated an antifa conference call and heard a Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, say he would make sure Trump lost. Powell’s own investigator called Oltmann “at the very least embellishing.” Coomer filed a defamation suit; in March 2022 the judge fined Oltmann almost $33,000 for failing to appear for a deposition. Used in Powell court filings in GA and MI, and an affidavit in AZ and WI.

• Maras (”Tore Says”) / Foreign Interference Claim – A QAnon influencer supplied an anonymous declaration alleging “unambiguous evidence” of foreign interference tying Dominion to Soros, China, and three presidential administrations. Patrick Byrne’s own investigators determined the source “lies, exaggerates, deflects… we cannot rely on her for anything factual.” Powell filed a declaration in AZ and WI lawsuits based on the anonymous source anyway.

• Edward Solomon / “algorithm” Analysis – A convicted felon with no formal math degree – whom Patrick Byrne called a “renowned mathematician” – claimed software must have used an algorithm to flip Fulton County votes. FactCheck.org quoted experts who said the analysis “shows a basic misunderstanding of how vote counts work”; Chicago and Stanford researchers found the flagged patterns were normal for a fraud-free election.

• Antrim County, Michigan “forensic report” – Allied Security Operations Group claimed Dominion’s system was “intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors.” The report’s own original co-author, Conan James Hayes, said the initial draft found no definitive fraud – the accusation was added after Russell Ramsland rewrote it and stripped the original analysts’ names. Michigan Secretary of State’s independent analysis and a bipartisan Republican-led investigation declared the theories “a complete waste of time to consider.” Flynn, Byrne, Giuliani, and Trump himself all promoted it anyway; the Antrim report was attached to an email from Trump’s personal secretary to the deputy attorney general subject-lined “From POTUS.”

• Hammer and Scorecard / Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium – A supposed CIA supercomputer (”Hammer”) used secret software (”Scorecard”) to alter votes nationwide. Lindell’s own “Red Team” texted each other in real time that the data was “NOT PROOF” and could be “from anywhere or even fake.” The key source, Dennis Montgomery, previously stood accused of defrauding the Pentagon of $20 million on unrelated software claims.

The Fulton County precedent – the pattern in real time

The same 2020 Fulton County fraud allegations were revived as justification for the FBI’s January 2026 seizure of 700+ boxes of election materials. Per NYT and ProPublica, the underlying affidavit “relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked” – allegations Georgia’s Republican election officials had already investigated and rejected. The referral came from Kurt Olsen, one of the lawyers who tried to overturn 2020, now Trump’s Director of Election Security and Integrity (Politico).

The same network is behind it. Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network – which worked behind the scenes to push rule changes through Georgia’s State Election Board that a judge later blocked as “illegal“ – appears connected to the information DOJ relied on (Democracy Docket).

The Bureau removed the people who pushed back. Atlanta FBI chief Paul Brown reviewed the evidence, determined it was insufficient, and was forced out; the raid happened anyway. On July 13, 2026, CBS News reported that the FBI had fired two more analysts the week before, after they raised concerns the Fulton probe was thin on evidence and politically motivated – even as the Bureau mobilized 260 analysts nationwide to complete records checks by July 17, three days before Thursday’s address.

Election deniers inside the government

The people who’ve spent years pushing debunked election conspiracy theories and working to help overturn Trump’s 2020 loss are now setting federal election policy (NYT interactive tracker).

• Heather Honey (DHS) – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity: Repeatedly pushed debunked Pennsylvania “more votes than voters” claims, was central to Arizona’s 2020 recount, and led inside Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Founded PA Fair Elections (EIN state chapter) and Verity Vote. Honey suggested the administration could declare a “national emergency” to bypass Congress and mandate election rules for state and local governments.

• David Harvilicz (DHS) – Assistant Secretary for Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk and Resilience Policy: Sets policy for securing the country’s election infrastructure – including voting machines. Has done business with James Penrose, who took part in 2020 efforts to seize voting machines, and has called for eliminating voting machines while questioning Democratic wins.

• Kurt Olsen (White House) – Director of Election Security and Integrity: Pro-Trump lawyer, one of the legal figures behind efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and opening the Fulton County investigation. Olsen filed multiple failed swing-state suits alleging fraud based on debunked conspiracy theories; while representing Kari Lake he was hit with sanctions for false and misleading claims. Also pushed the Dominion/Venezuela international-conspiracy theory.

• Clay Parikh (White House) – Special Government Employee (Cybersecurity): Former cybersecurity consultant and election-denial advocate who testified in election challenges in Arizona and Georgia after 2020. Supported claims Dominion systems had been manipulated and pushed for forensic examinations of voting machines despite audits confirming election accuracy.

• Bill Pulte (ODNI) – Acting Director of National Intelligence: Appointed to probe “rigged elections“ and declassify 2020-related materials, with no intelligence background of any kind and reportedly no security-clearance vetting. Built his profile by sending DOJ criminal fraud referrals against Trump’s perceived political opponents (Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, Fani Willis).

• Kash Patel (FBI) – Director: Overseeing the criminal investigation into supposed 2020 irregularities that produced the Fulton County seizure and a Maricopa County subpoena; sidestepped confirming Trump lost 2020 at his Senate hearing. Promoted the unsubstantiated theory that seized fake driver’s licenses were part of a Chinese plot to help Biden win.

• Jeanine Pirro (DOJ) – U.S. Attorney, Washington, D.C.: Former Fox News host who, after 2020, became one of the most prominent media figures repeatedly amplifying stolen-election claims involving Dominion, ballot fraud, and election manipulation despite a lack of evidence.

• Markwayne Mullin (DHS) – Secretary of Homeland Security: Voted against 2020 certification and signed the Texas amicus brief to invalidate battleground-state results. Now holding $1 billion in Homeland Security Grant Program funds from states that don’t implement new federal “election security” mandates.

• Harmeet K. Dhillon (DOJ) – Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights: Former Kari Lake campaign lawyer and RNLA/RNC leader. Directed DOJ to sue 30 states and D.C. for unredacted voter rolls, and threatened state administrators with federal criminal prosecution.

• Marci McCarthy (DoD) – Director of External Engagement, CIO: Leader in the Georgia chapter of EIN and former CISA Director of Public Affairs. While at CISA, attended a private summit in Washington whose main topic was urging Trump to declare a “national emergency” and seize federal control over the 2026 midterms; also worked with EIN to place activists on DeKalb County’s election board and helped oust a board member who opposed ending mail voting.

• Eric Neff (DOJ) – Acting Chief, Voting Section, Civil Rights Division: Former LA County prosecutor placed on leave after using True the Vote tips to prosecute the CEO of an election-management company; served as a lawyer for Patrick Byrne, who advised the Trump administration to seize voting machines in 2020.

• Christopher Gardner (DOJ) – Trial Attorney, Voting Section: Former attorney for Georgia Republicans who helped file a lawsuit seeking to prevent Georgia from certifying the 2020 election results.

• Joseph Voiland (DOJ) – Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division: Former attorney for the Trump campaign who worked on 2020 post-election litigation and efforts to invalidate ballots.

The cost of lying about election fraud

Fox News paid Dominion $787.5 million – the largest publicly known media defamation settlement in U.S. history – after a judge ruled its on-air Dominion claims were false. Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to Georgia election workers after conceding in court that his ballot-fraud claims about them were false. Sidney Powell’s lawyers admitted “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.”

The Gateway Pundit settled with Georgia election workers; owner Jim Hoft later admitted there was no widespread fraud in 2020.

Salem Media pulled “2000 Mules” and apologized. Dinesh D’Souza, the fi;m’s director, separately apologized in writing.

Newsmax paid Smartmatic $40 million and One America News (OAN) separately settled (terms undisclosed).

The broader litigation record

Of the roughly 62 lawsuits Trump and his allies filed challenging the 2020 results, 61 were rejected. Per the Just Security tracker, 30 were dismissed after a hearing on the merits; the rest for lack of standing or voluntarily withdrawn. The single win (Pennsylvania) concerned mail-ballot ID curing deadlines, not fraud, and didn’t affect the outcome.

Speak up. Remain vigilant. Be ready to vote.

Fair Fight Action Team

Paid for by Fair Fight Action.