Many conservatives with a conscience and a spine have condemned Donald Trump’s blatant contempt for the truth, the law, democracy and the Constitution.
However, few conservatives have authoritatively, exhaustively and convincingly documented the gravity and the extent of Trump’s treasonous behavior and actions behind his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him.
Even fewer have been of the stature, prestige and impeccable conservative credentials as the eight signatories to a 72-page Report that once and for all establishes the fact that Trump lost the election, that it was not stolen.
In Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election, eight “
The eight are, in their own words, “political conservatives who have spent most of [their] adult lives working to support the Constitution and the conservative principles upon which it is based: limited government, liberty, equality of opportunity, freedom of religion, a strong national defense, and the rule of law,” and who “have become deeply troubled by efforts to overturn or discredit the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.”
They assert: “There is no principle of our Republic more fundamental than the right of the People to elect our leaders and for their votes to be counted accurately…” and warn that efforts, such as those by Trump and his supporters “to thwart the People’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic.” The consequences of such efforts and charges are “monumental,” they write.
“If true,”– a possibility thoroughly debunked by the authors – “our electoral system is in desperate need of repair.” On the other hand. “If not true,” – as exhaustively confirmed by the eight conservatives – “such false charges corrode our democracy and leave a significant share of the population doubting the legitimacy of our system, seriously weakening the country.”
Sadly, they point out, “30 percent of the country lack faith in election results” because of the false claims of a “stolen” election. Such, they write, “is not sustainable in a democracy…it discredits the political party making those charges.”
By setting out the full record, they hope to “help restore faith in the reliability of our elections.”
And, indeed, that “full record” includes the meticulous examination of all 187 counts of alleged fraud and irregularities Trump and his supporters claimed in 64 cases filed in six battleground states.
The “cases” included some of the now (in)famous claims alleging that:
• Dominion voting machines were manipulated
• Ballots cast by deceased were counted
• Unsolicited mail-in ballots were sent to voters
• Poll officials failed to carefully monitor the election count
• There was interference with election observers
• There were voter drives and bribery
While Trump claimed that there were thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands fraudulent votes cast, the report finds:
[T]here is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct.
“Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case,” the report concludes, adding that “even now, twenty months after the election, a period in which Trump’s supporters have been scouring every nook and cranny for proof that the election was stolen, they come up empty.”
While the report does not address issues of potential illegal or criminal activity in the pursuit of the “Big Lie,” the ongoing Congressional January 6 hearings and other investigations — such as the one in Georgia — may reveal that such indeed took place in the pursuit of Trump’s “Big Lie.”
To read the full report, please go to lostnotstolen.org or click HERE.
Added
The following are the eight signatories to the Report:
Senator John Danforth
Benjamin Ginsberg
The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith
David Hoppe
The Honorable J. Michael Luttig
The Honorable Michael W. McConnell
The Honorable Theodore B. Olson
Senator Gordon H. Smith
