In a court filing made public on October 2, special counsel Jack Smith “revealed a litany of damning new allegations about former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election.” Mother Jones noted that the filing “presents new evidence that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false but proceeded anyway with a scheme to use so-called fake electors and outside pressure to stop Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being made official.” Trump and his legal team tried to block the release of this document, arguing that it is a “politically motivated manifesto to the public.” [Mother Jones, 10/2/24; NBC News, 10/3/24]

The motion also laid out the numerous false statements Trump made about the election process in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump said that unregistered people, felons, and dead people voted in these states, claiming that “illegal” drop boxes were used. [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have viciously attacked Smith over the course of his investigations, calling him “sleazy” and a “prosecutorial hitman” who should be prosecuted himself for “seditious conspiracy.” Smith was appointed to oversee two investigations into Trump — one related to his retention of classified documents and another into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. [Media Matters, 5/30/24]

According to the special counsel motion, Trump claimed that Arizona’s election results were suspect as “more than 36,000 votes were cast by non-citizens” and that “there were 11,000 more ballots than there were voters.” [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro alleged “the fact that there appears to be evidence of, you know, illegals voting, dead people voting, boxes being pulled out after people are told to leave” in Georgia, adding that “the same kind of thing [is] going on in Arizona, I understand.” Jenna Ellis, a member of the Trump 2020 reelection campaign's legal team, agreed and said, “In Arizona, for example, we have over 500,000 ballots that were cast illegally — 11,000, just 11,000 are overvotes, meaning more votes were cast than they have registered voters. Just that alone would change the outcome of the election.” [Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, 12/5/20; CBS News, 8/5/24]

The special counsel’s motion notes that Trump made numerous statements about Georgia’s election results, claiming that tens of thousands of ballots were ineligible for various reasons. Trump alleged that thousands of dead people, ineligible felons, unregistered people, and underage citizens voted, claiming that “over 18,000 illegal ballots were cast” by voters using vacant addresses and “at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3rd election.” [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

Then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson displayed a list of supposed names of “deceased voters” with the chyron “Yes, dead people did vote in the election.” Carlson further claimed, “Dead people tend to vote more often when you make it easier for them to vote. They are like any other group. This year, we made it much easier for the dead to vote." [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/11/20]

Fox News’ Sean Hannity said, “The Georgia state Senate Judiciary Committee held an explosive hearing on election improprieties where the Trump campaign presented more evidence of illegal voting, including the video we've been showing you on your screen, as, well, thousands of felons apparently also voted illegally and thousands of underage voters, dead voters.” Former Trump press secretary and current Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany added, “As you can quite evidently see from testimony today in Georgia and all across the nation, a mass mail-in voting system with no safeguards led to exactly what you're watching." [Fox News, Hannity, 12/3/20]

Tea Party Patriots co-founder and Washington Times columnist Jenny Beth Martin alleged there are “tens of thousands of votes that were cast illegally and then counted in the state of Georgia.” Martin, who was also a Trump team legal consultant, continued, “There were felons who voted. There were people who are underage who voted, there were people who moved to other states or registered to vote in other states after they had registered to vote in Georgia, and the list goes on and on." [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 12/4/20]

Guest and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk praised Martin for her “phenomenal work,” saying, “There’s other questions that we have around the state of Georgia — as Jenny Beth Martin mentioned, underage voters, felon voters, out of state voters. And even [Republican Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger himself has now said he has 250 active investigations into voter fraud in the state of Georgia.” Kirk added he believes “this conversation is just beginning around this.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 12/4/20]

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson claimed that there was a “very credible” pending case in Georgia that involved voters who were “felons, moved out of state, had died," claiming the number was “more than the margin of victory.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 12/8/20]

According to the newly unsealed motion, Trump alleged that Nevada’s signature verification machines were problematic as in Clark County, “the accuracy settings on signature verification machines were purposely lowered before they were used to count over 130,000 ballots.” He also asserted that there were “more than 42,000 double votes in Nevada.” [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer questioned why the signature verification machines were only “preset at 40%” and not “up to 100%, which would rule out any little deviation of a signature.” He then asked, “Why wasn’t it set at any level where you really did have a lot of confidence and the only signatures would be the one that matched, particularly since Nevada had never before mailed ballots in the general election to all its voters?” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/16/20]

Guest and Las Vegas Journal Review columnist Victor Joecks claimed that Nevada’s signature verification machines, “which had been built up as this infallible security measure, had an 89% failure rate.” Joecks made this claim based on his own bizarre experiment in which he copied signatures of nine volunteers as they appeared on the ballot, sent it to them, and they copied his copy of their signatures onto the ballots and mailed them in. Eight out of nine signatures were supposedly accepted. Anchor Martha MacCallum called this result “shocking.” [Fox News, The Story, 11/17/20]

American Conservative Union’s Matt Schlapp claimed that Nevada had “thousands and thousands of examples of real people in real-life instances of voter illegality,” including “nonresidents” and “people voting twice, dead people voting,” adding, “I believe the results in Nevada should be switched.” Guest host and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said, “I would really like to hear the Clark County clerk explain to people why nonresidents of Nevada can continue to vote in Nevada. I can't wait to have him in a deposition.” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/24/20]

Hannity reported that “one whistleblower [is] claiming that over 40,000 people actually voted twice, 23,000 ballots were mailed to out-of-state voters,” adding, “That's illegal.” He also promised his audience that his show would have “all of the details here” of a court proceeding discussing “44,000 ballots cast from nonresidential, nonexistent addresses, 1,500 from people all voting from beyond the grave.” [Fox News, Hannity, 12/2/20]

Following the court testimony, Hannity said that “real people” under “penalty of perjury” confirmed that “over 130,000 ballots in Nevada were illegally cast.” Hannity said, “They have identified what they believe were 42,000 people who actually voted twice, 23,000 people that were mailed to people out of the state. That would be an ineligible voter, 44,000 ballots cast from nonexistent or commercial addresses. Nonexistent. And over 1,500 votes from people who are not alive. They are dead.” [Fox News, Hannity, 12/3/20]

After Trump’s lawsuit to get Nevada to toss its election results was itself thrown out, Hannity hosted then-Trump campaign lawyer Jesse Binnall, who claimed that his “ragtag group of volunteers and lawyers put together … an excellent case that showed exactly a conservative number for how many fraudulent votes there were in Nevada, and the real number is actually probably much higher than that." Binnall also threatened to take the case to the Supreme Court of Nevada, adding, “If we're really going to be a nation, for the people, of the people, and by the people, then that means elections where the voters decide — not having disenfranchisement of voters by allowing thousands and thousands on thousands of fraudulent votes." [Fox News, Hannity, 12/4/20; Nevada Independent, 12/5/20]

Before Trump’s election lawsuit was rejected, former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel alleged that “Donald Trump will win Nevada” because his team was “collecting this evidence” of “42,000 voters double voting, including people voting from abandoned residences and casting votes.” McDaniel also claimed that Nevada ”did not check their voter rolls, and this is what you are getting, chaos on the back end, and I think it is good that we called this to attention and we make sure that we don't let this happen again." [Fox News, The Story, 12/3/20]

The special counsel’s motion states that Trump claimed thousands of dead people voted in Pennsylvania. He also claimed that 400,000 absentee ballots appeared after the election and that tens of thousands of ballots were received back before they were mailed out. [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

Then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed on Fox that 450,000 ballots were “not observed” when counted because “these ballots were always the ballots they were going to use to try to catch up if they were behind.” Giuliani also claimed, “I think we have enough to change Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania election was a disaster. … We have people that observed people being pushed out of the polling place. We have people who were suggested to vote the other way and shown how to do it. I'm giving you the big picture, where the numbers are such that you could reverse the call.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 11/8/20]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed on Sean Hannity’s show that “Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake. … You're talking about a lot of dead people voting.” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/5/20]

Hannity claimed that 100,000 ballots in Pennsylvania are “seeming to just, well, appear out of thin air.” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/4/20]

According to the newly released court filing, Trump said that thousands of ballots were illegally harvested and that 170,000 invalid absentee votes were counted. [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Donald J. Trump, Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations, 10/2/24]

On Fox & Friends, Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed that there are “hundreds of thousands of improperly-cast ballots … absentee voters who never actually submitted the request for an absentee ballot.” He also claimed that in “Democrat precincts” in the state, “they solicited hundreds of thousands of votes from people who never applied to be absentee voters. We have no idea who these people are. We have no idea if they're even eligible to vote in their state or how many fraudulent ballots were included.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/14/20]

On Sean Hannity’s show, former RNC Chair Reince Priebus suggested that 100,000 absentee ballots were issued “without an absentee ballot request form,” making them invalid. [Fox News, Hannity, 12/9/20]