Former President Donald Trump told supporters in Michigan Thursday that he “won” the 2020 election –after repeatedly saying he “lost by a whisker” and just one day after federal prosecutors filed new claims about his behavior leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“You know last time, last election — we did great in 2016. A lot of people don’t know, we did much better in 2020,” Trump, 78, said at a campaign rally in Saginaw.
“We won. We won,” he added.
“It was a rigged election,” the Republican nominee went on. “If I thought I lost, I wouldn’t be doing this again.”
While the 45th president never formally conceded defeat to Joe Biden, he had moved off his more inflammatory rhetoric about the 2020 election over the past several weeks, instead saying that he “lost by a whisker.”
The return of Trump’s claim to victory comes one day after a DC federal judge unsealed a filing by special counsel Jack Smith detailing evidence that the former president is not entitled to immunity in the election subversion case against him.
The 165-page brief is a response to the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that presidents enjoy an “absolute” shield from prosecution for “official acts” during their time in office — and details alleged conversations Trump had with his staff and messages he sent ahead of the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes.
Prosecutors claim that Trump was alone when he tweeted about Vice President Mike Pence lacking “courage” to overturn the result during the riot — suggesting he was acting as a private citizen and not as president.
The brief also claims that Trump said “So what?” when an aide told him that Pence was being evacuated to a secure location as rioters closed in — and told his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
The case won’t go to trial until after the Nov. 5 election, if it ever takes place at all.
But the Trump team expressed outrage that the filing had been unsealed 34 days before the polls close, claiming US District Judge Tanya Chutkan had acted out of bias against the Republican nominee.
“ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” the former president posted Wednesday on Truth Social.
“The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional [sic] J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country,” he raged in another post, “is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”
