Topline
Former President Donald Trump sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Thursday asking him to “act now” to conduct an audit of the 2020 presidential election in the state, which he carried by a comfortable six percentage points.
Then President Donald Trump gives a double thumbs-up at a "Make America Great Again" rally in ... [+]
Key Facts
Trump did not make any specific allegations to back up his call for an audit in Texas, saying he supports it because: “I hear Texans want an election audit!”
Trump urged the state legislature to pass House Bill 16 during the ongoing special session and asked Abbott to support the legislation, which would create a process for civil investigations into election “irregularities” if there are complaints.
The bill is modeled on legislation state Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R) introduced during an earlier special session, which he told the Houston Chronicle is not designed to authorize “an Arizona-style audit.”
Trump won Texas by a much larger margin than what was expected based on polling, and the 2020 election in Texas is widely regarded as a disaster for Democrats, who also failed to take control of the state House, as they had hoped.
Crucial Quote
“Your citizens don’t trust the election system, and they want your leadership on this issue, which is the number one thing they care about,” Trump said in the letter.
Key Background
Tougher restrictions on voting and more scrutiny into election processes have become major priorities for Republican state legislators across the country in the wake of Trump’s repeated, baseless claims that widespread fraud kept him from winning the 2020 presidential election. Numerous recounts after Election Day affirmed President Joe Biden’s win and disproved Trump’s claims of fraud, but that has not stopped some Republicans from conducting their own, conspiracy theory-driven investigations into the election results. The most notable of these has been in Arizona, where a hand recount of more than 2 million Maricopa County ballots took place over the past five months, with the audit taking bizarre steps like scanning ballots for bamboo fibers to investigate an absurd claim that ballots were shipped into the state from Asia. Republican legislators in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have also ordered reviews of election results, despite the fact that recounts at this point have turned up nothing that would change the long-certified results of the 2020 election.
What To Watch For
Arizona Republicans and the conspiracy theorists they hired to run the audit plan to release their findings at 4 p.m. EDT on Friday. There will be no public comment or questions.
Further Reading
Texas Republicans launch last-ditch effort to audit 2020 election results - especially in Harris County (Houston Chronicle)
Arizona’s Criticized Election Review Nears End, but Copycats Are Just Getting Started (The New York Times)
