CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned a research firm to corroborate his election fraud allegations but failed to prove his theory, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
The Berkeley research group was commissioned to examine voting data from six states, according to The Washington Post, and a source told the publication the campaign hopes to test about a dozen claims. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings were not what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never made public.
While some anomalies and “anomalous data patterns” were found, they won’t have an impact on President Joe Biden’s victory, the Post reported.
The firm’s findings also refute some of Trump’s voting machinations, including the identification of dead persons used to cast ballots and the Dominion voting system used to manipulate results, the newspaper reported.
The study was conducted in the final weeks of 2020 and before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the Post. The Jan. 6 House committee investigating Trump’s role in sedition was unaware of the firm’s work, two sources told CNN.
Trump continues to repeat his electoral lies as he focuses on reaching the White House in 2024.
CNN previously reported that his first rally late last month showed the forward-looking nature of what he was trying to achieve with a second term after two years of allies and advisers suggested stopping exhaustive rediscussion of the 2020 election information.
The former president has often pushed back on that suggestion, arguing his message is strong enough, and a source close to him told CNN he’s having a hard time changing his focus on the 2020 election because he still hears regularly from members. Opinion His supporters see so-called electoral integrity as an important topic as he seeks re-election.
Another adviser said that while several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election lost, Trump said he did not believe their defeats had anything to do with their electoral lies.