# United States of America v. Donald J. Trump - Government's Motion for Immunity Determinations/Section 1B

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​B. The Defendant Knew that His Claims of Outcome-Determinative Fraud Were False
Following election day and throughout the charged conspiracies, the defendant, his co-conspirators, and their agents spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These lies included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the defendant to votes for Biden. And the defendant and co-conspirators continued to make these unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing claims even after they had been publicly disproven or after advisors had directly informed the defendant that they were untrue.
The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors—acting not in an official capacity but in a private or Campaign-related capacity—told him they were not true. These advisors ​included P9 the White House staffer and Campaign conduit, and Pence, the defendant's running mate.
P9 relationship with the defendant began before P9 worked for him in the White House. P9 had known P13 the defendant's son-in-law, since P13 was a child, and through P13 met P14 and then the defendant. P9 was one of several attorneys who represented the defendant in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, including presenting argument on the Senate floor on January 27, 2020. P9 began working in the White House as an Assistant to the President in August 2020. In October 2020, P9 became interested in learning more about the defendant's Campaign, and in early November 2020, after he began interfacing with Campaign staff, P9 consulted with the White House Counsel's Office to ensure he compiled with any applicable laws regarding Campaign activity. Thereafter, and throughout the post-election period, P9 became a conduit of information from the Campaign to the defendant, and over the course of the conspiracies, P9 told the defendant the unvarnished truth about his Campaign legal team and the claims of fraud that they and the defendant were making. Examples of these instances include:
In the post-election time period, Pence—the defendant's own running mate, who he had directed to assess fraud allegations—told the defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud in the election. This was in one of the many conversations the defendant and Pence had as running mates, in which they discussed their shared electoral interests. Pence gradually and gently tried to convince the defendant to accept the lawful results of the election, even if it meant they lost. These conversations included:
But the defendant disregarded P9 and Pence in the same way that he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies' legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states—including those in his own party—who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false. Election officials, for instance, issued press releases and other public statements to combat the disinformation that the defendant and allies were spreading. At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud ​ claims, P15 a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members that "it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell."
The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth—and thus their knowledge of falsity—when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the Government will introduce several instances of this pattern, in which the defendant and conspirators' lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators' claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona; five days later, it was "beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn't vote"; three weeks later, "the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000"; days after that, the assertion was 32,000; and ultimately, the conspirators landed back where they started, at 36,000—a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.
Ultimately, the defendant's steady stream of disinformation in the post-election period culminated in the speech he gave at a privately-funded, privately-organized rally at the Ellipse on the morning of January 6, 2021, in advance of the official proceeding in which Congress was to certify the election in favor of Biden. In his speech, the defendant repeated the same lies about ​election fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that had been publicly, or directly, debunked. The defendant used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding.
* ↑ GA 699 ( ).
* ↑ GA 671 ( ).
* ↑ GA 672-673; GA 686 ( ).
* ↑ GA 205 ( ).
* ↑ Id.
* ↑ GA 198-204 ( ).
* ↑ GA 715, 718 ( ).
* ↑ GA 213-214 ( ).
* ↑ GA 718 ( ).
* ↑ GA 715-721 ( ); GA 207-213 ( ).
* ↑ GA 211-212 ( ).
* ↑ GA 414-420 ( ).
* ↑ GA 412-413 ( ).
* ↑ GA 413-414 ( ).
* ↑ GA 421 ( ). See GA 1016 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 430).
* ↑ GA 1036 ( ); GA 1034-1035 ( ).
* ↑ GA 422-424 ( ). See GA 1017 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 431).
* ↑ GA 1037 ( ).
* ↑ GA 425-426 ( ). See GA 1018 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 432).
* ↑ GA 430 ( ); GA 736 ( ).
* ↑ GA 442-448 ( ). See GA 1020-1022 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 437- 439).
* ↑ GA 1039 ( ). See GA 1018 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 432).
* ↑ GA 427-429, GA 431-435 ( ). See GA 1018 (Pence, So Help Me God p. 432).
* ↑ GA 1040 (Joint Statement 11/20/2020).
* ↑ See, e.g., GA 1043 (Letter to Maricopa County voters 11/17/2020); GA 838 (Arizona Governor's Tweet 12/01/2020); GA 1041 (Arizona Legislator's Statement 12/04/2020); GA 1044-1046 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release 10/23/2020); GA 1047-1048 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release 11/09/2020); GA 1960 (Video of Georgia Press Conference 11/12/2020); GA 1049-1050 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release 11/18/2020); GA 1051-1052 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release (11/19/2020); GA 1053-1054 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release 12/07/2020); GA 1946 (Video of Georgia News Conference 12/07/2020); GA 1948 (Video of Georgia Press Conference 12/16/2020); GA 1055*1057 (Georgia Secretary of State News Release 12/29/2020); GA 1949 (Video of Georgia Secretary of State Interview with Cavuto 01/02/2021); GA 1958 (Video of Georgia Press Conference 01/04/2021); GA 1058-1059 (Michigan Secretary of State web page 12/18/2020); GA 1040 (Michigan Legislators' Joint Statement 11/20/2020); GA 1060-1062 (Michigan Attorney General and Secretary of State News Release 12/14/2020); GA 1063-1064 (Michigan Secretary of State web page 12/17/2020); GA 1065 (Michigan Secretary of State web page 12/18/2020); GA 1066 (Michigan Secretary of State web page); GA 1907 (Video of Michigan Clerk's Statement); GA 1068-1070 (New Mexico Secretary of State News Release 12/14/2020); GA 1953 (Video of P47 Interview with CNN 11/11/2020); GA 822 ( P47 Tweet 11/27/2020); GA 1071-1072 (Pennsylvania Department of State Public Response Statement 12/29/2020); GA 1073-1076 (Wisconsin Elections Commission web page 11/05/2020); GA 1077-1081 (Wisconsin Elections Commission web page 11/10/2020); GA 1082-1087 (Wisconsin Elections Commission web page.)
* ↑ GA 308 ( ).
* ↑ GA 1890 at 20:46 (Common Sense with 11/25/2020).
* ↑ GA 1906 at 2:06:25 (Video of Arizona Hotel Hearing 11/30/2020).
* ↑ GA 1980 at 18:52 ( ).
* ↑ GA 1981 at 35:19 ( ).
* ↑ GA 1106 (Dalton Rally Speech Draft Tr. 01/04/2021); GA 1134 (Ellipse Rally Speech Draft Tr. 01/06/2021).
* ↑ GA 1114-1141 (Ellipse Rally Speech Draft Tr. 01/06/2021); GA 1142 ( ).
* ↑ GA 1126-1129, GA 1131-1136 (Ellipse Rally Speech Draft Tr. 01/06/2021).
* ↑ GA 1140 (Ellipse Rally Speech Draft Tr. 01/06/2021).