- A federal judge said Wednesday that Trump lied under oath about voter fraud claims in the 2020 election.
- Trump “knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong” but touted them “both in court and to the public,” Judge David Carter wrote.
- Carter made the determination in a ruling ordering a GOP lawyer to turn over his communications to the Jan. 6 committee.
A federal judge said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump lied under oath about voter fraud claims in Georgia while trying to get the state’s 2020 election results overturned.
US District Judge David Carter made the determination in a ruling ordering the conservative lawyer John Eastman to turn over to the January 6 select committee a batch of his communications related to Trump’s and his allies’ efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.
On December 4, 2020, Trump’s legal team filed a lawsuit in Georgia state court alleging that Fulton County had miscounted thousands of votes. They also contested the state court’s proceedings in federal court.
But later that month, Carter wrote in his ruling, Eastman said in an email that although Trump had “‘signed a verification for [the state court filing] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate. For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.'”
But Trump and his lawyers still filed their complaint citing those numbers, and Trump signed a letter “swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers ‘are true and correct’ or ‘believed to be true and correct’ to the best of his knowledge and belief,” Carter wrote.
He added: “The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.”
Wednesday wasn’t the first time Carter suggested the former president committed a crime in connection to his crusade to subvert the 2020 election results.
In a March ruling, the judge said Trump “likely” obstructed Congress — a felony — when he tried to disrupt the election certification process on January 6, 2021.
Carter pointed out the dozens of lawsuits Trump’s campaign and his Republican allies filed in court contesting the election results in battleground states that Joe Biden won.
After “filing and losing more than sixty suits, this plan was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means,” the ruling said, adding that the “illegality of the plan was obvious.”
Trump and Eastman “launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote. “Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower — it was a coup in search of a legal theory.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates.