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Late last week, as his administration was preparing to launch aerial military attacks against Iran, President Donald Trump once again promoted the baseless claim that former President Joe Biden’s win against him in the 2020 presidential election was somehow rigged.
Trump also demanded that a special prosecutor be chosen to investigate the 2020 election, despite numerous probes showing no evidence that fraud had affected the outcome of the race.
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social. “The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”
Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election, but failed to sway any federal judge on the need to delay certification of the results. Even the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal brought by several Republican-led states to upend the race.
Despite those setbacks, Trump continued to insist that he did not, in fact, lose the race to Biden, and encouraged his loyalists to descend on Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, the day Congress was set to certify the results of the Electoral College.
After Trump gave an incendiary speech telling his followers to march to the Capitol and that they could “never take back” the country “with weakness,” his loyalists violently breached the Capitol building, forcing lawmakers to evacuate and rioting on the grounds for several hours.
Trump didn’t instruct his mob of loyalists to depart for about 187 minutes. Nearly four years later, after he won the 2024 presidential race, he would grant pardons to every person that took part in the day’s violence.
As Trump continues to push unfounded claims that widespread fraud led to his 2020 defeat, he has also promoted other wild conspiracy theories regarding Biden. Just weeks ago, for example, Trump shared a post from a supporter on Truth Social that absurdly claimed that the former president had been replaced by “clones” and “robotic engineered soulless mindless entities” — a move several Trump critics have called “unhinged” and indicative of a sitting president “detached from reality.” Members of the Trump administration have avoided answering questions on the conspiracy theory.
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