Trump Pushes Dangerous New Voter Fraud Claims About Key Swing State

Donald Trump is once again exaggerating conspiracy theories about Democrats committing voter fraud into existence. 

During a rally in Glendale, Arizona, Thursday night, Trump claimed that there had been “bad votes” discovered in York County and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a key battleground state where early voting has indicated that Trump isn’t doing too well. 

Trump claimed that in Lancaster County, “there were 2,600 votes that happened to be written by the same pen, same hand, same signature, same everything. Uhhhh maybe there’s an explanation for that? Two thousand six hundred votes!”

There is an explanation for that, actually, which is that it’s a lie. Lancaster County didn’t discover thousands of fraudulent votes, but flagged a batch of voter registration forms for review. 

Last week, the county flagged around 2,500 voter registration forms for issues, including fake names, dubious signatures, inaccurate addresses and social security information, and other worrying details including suspicious handwriting, according to the Associated Press. Not only were the forms not ballots, but there was no evidence to suggest that they were all written by the same person.

Of the voter registration forms investigated, around three out of five had problems, according to Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, who said Thursday her office was still actively investigating the issue. 

This isn’t the first time Trump has attempted to place Lancaster’s investigation at the center of his bogus claims of voter fraud. The former president posted on Truth Social Monday that Lancaster County had been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” 

By Wednesday, he was full-on raging over his fake version of the story. “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” he wrote. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”

York County has also received suspicious voter registration forms and mail-in ballot applications, according to ABC News. The county had received the forms as part of a large delivery of election materials from a third-party organization Field+Media Corps, which was acting on behalf of the Everybody Votes Campaign, according to County Commissioner Julie Wheeler. The documents are now under review, and if officials discover fraud, the forms will be fully investigated by the district attorney, Wheeler said.  

Both Lancaster County and York County supported Trump in the 2020 election. 

As Election Day approaches, and likely for many weeks after, Trump is sure to continue exaggerating to the point of invention as he attempts to undermine the integrity of the election.

Elon Musk is now under fire in multiple swing states over his election interference.

Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has asked Elon Musk to take down an “obviously fake” video which appeared to show a Haitian immigrant who claimed to have voted multiple times in Georgia and encouraged others to do the same.

“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen in this and other elections. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the 2024 Presidential election,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement on Thursday night.

His office says that they are working to identify exactly where the video came from, and that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is also investigating the matter. But Raffensperger and CISA have their suspicions about its origin.

“This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort. Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms,” wrote Raffensperger. “The likeliest suspect is a Russian troll farm,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, agreed. “It’s isn’t even that good of a fake … but it is fake. It is a lie. Please let anyone you know that this is a steaming pile of Russian … well you get it.”

Former CISA Director Chris Krebs also called the video “more nonsense from Russian troll farms.”

Georgia was subjected to massive disinformation campaigns during Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and was subject to Russian interference campaigns that sowed conflict in the state in 2016.

But fomenting distrust in the election system is easier when it’s coming from Trump and Musk themselves. In recent days, both billionaires have peddled lies about mass voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump’s campaign may have been riding high in a garbage truck earlier this week, but the latest numbers out of Pennsylvania have them feeling pretty trashed.

In Pennsylvania, more than 100,000 new voters have already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, dwarfing the 80,000 vote margin by which Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020, according to NBC News.

That means that if everyone who voted in 2020 cast their ballots the same way this year, this group of new voters would decide the race. Unfortunately for Trump, this group is dominated by female registered Democrats, who are likely to split for Kamala Harris.

Nearly 62 million early votes had already been cast nationwide as of Thursday evening, with 54 percent of ballots having been cast by women and 44 percent cast by men, according to Newsweek. Early voting in Pennsylvania mirrors that trend.*

While this data comes days ahead of Election Day, and women are more likely than men to vote early, the number of female voters has regularly exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1980. And this trend in early voting isn’t just contained to Pennsylvania. Across several battleground states, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far, according to Politico.

In an essential battleground state such as Pennsylvania, where polls have shown a particularly tight race, turnout and enthusiasm could be the key for Harris to claim victory in a state Trump plainly needs to win. And apparently, Trump’s team is panicking, according to Puck News.

“They’re going so crazy here,” one campaign source told Puck’s Tara Palmeri. “Anyone who hears how rabid they are about this issue can’t walk away from this and think they feel comfortable about where they’re at in PA.”

“They’re talking about criminal referrals,” the source continued. “They want to find poll watchers who they feel are engaged in voter suppression so that they can refer criminal prosecutions.”

The Trump campaign has already set to work making their desperate attempts to smear campaign officials in Pennsylvania. Earlier this week, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee Co-Chair Michael Whatley accused election officials in Delaware County of “actively suppressing” voters after one woman, a Trump supporter, was arrested at a polling station, according to ABC News.

Delaware County officials said that the woman had been “disruptive, belligerent, and attempting to influence voters waiting in line.” Later, officials said that the woman “did not get in line for any service,” loitered in the lobby for nearly two hours, and “approached various individuals,” which prompted complaints.

In a video with Whatley, the woman claimed she had been arrested “for exercising my First Amendment right” as she “tried to get the vote out.”

The Trump campaign has continued to push narratives of alleged voter suppression by election officials. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Trump and Senate candidate David McCormick sued the county over long lines at polling stations as people tried to register for mail-in voting. A judge has since extended the deadline to sign up for mail-in voting in the county. Both Delaware County and Bucks County supported Biden over Trump in 2020.

* This article previously misstated the number of early votes cast in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump made a dark and ominous threat against former Representative Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent critics.

At a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, with Tucker Carlson Thursday night, Trump attacked Cheney’s record on war, calling her “a very dumb individual.” The former president also insulted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and insinuated that she should be shot.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.

Trump’s threat evoked his earlier comments about using the military against “the enemy within,” which he said included the likes of Representatives Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, Cheney would also be on that list.

Trump’s gruesome attack was immediately met with backlash, including from Cheney herself.

With the election only days away, Trump has ramped up his violent rhetoric in a desperate attempt to scare up whatever votes he can, going after one of his most well-known critics in Cheney, who is campaigning with Kamala Harris. If he was trying to paint Cheney as a warmonger in comparison to himself, he failed heavily, as his choice of words is now what people are talking about.

Explosive new audio reveals that Donald Trump detailed how he really felt about his White House staff to Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein touted old photos of Trump with half-naked women taken at the site of the pedophile’s rampant sexual abuse of young girls.

On author Michael Wolff’s Thursday episode of his podcast Fire and Fury, Wolff shared a recording of a conversation with Epstein from 2017, in which the convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker recounted Trump’s true feelings about members of his administration, The Daily Beast reported.

“His people fight each other and then have outsiders—he sort of poisons the well outside,” Epstein told Wolff. Epstein went on to paraphrase Trump’s candid statements about his former strategist Steve Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“He will tell 10 people, ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kelly has a big mouth’—what do you think? ‘Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson,’” Epstein said.

“‘So Kelly[anne]—even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband—Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard.’ And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you, but Kellyanne hates you,’” Epstein continued.

Wolff said that he had recordings of roughly “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his long standing, deep relationship with Donald Trump.”

Epstein also shared photos from the “late 90s” of Trump surrounded by “topless young women” at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, where the disgraced financier victimized dozens of underage girls alongside his friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap,” Wolff said. “I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.”

Wolff claimed the FBI discovered the photos in Epstein’s safe when the agency raided his home in 2019, but never released the images to the public. Wolff described the photographs when discussing how he used Epstein as a main source for his book Fire and Fury, which focused on the Trump White House.

Wolff said that Epstein was afraid of Trump, believing that he was “capable of doing anything.”

The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff’s claims in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.”

Last week, a former model came forward with allegations that Trump had once groped her at a party, as part of a “twisted game” he was playing with Epstein. Trump recently praised Epstein, calling the sex offender, who died in prison before ever standing trial for sex trafficking charges, a “good salesman.”

“He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands,” Trump said in September, clarifying that he’d never been to Epstein’s infamous hub of sex trafficking. Trump waffled for years on the prospect of releasing files on Epstein’s known associates, and claimed that they likely contained “phony” stuff.

This story has been updated.