
Trump, FBI renew allegations of 2020 election fraud
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President Donald Trump has renewed calls for a special prosecutor to probe false claims of fraud in the 2020 election but an election expert believes it is likely just a new effort to raise funds.
Earlier this month, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media he had found new evidence implicating the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 election interference.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said Patel's approach is not typical.

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"If the FBI has evidence of a crime, what they don't do is announce it on social media," Becker pointed out. "They don't send it up to the Senate to do further investigation. If the FBI has evidence of a crime, they investigate, they indict and prosecute. We are not seeing that here."
Despite dozens of lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the 2020 election, no federal judges cited a need to delay certification of the results, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal brought by several Republican-led states to overturn the outcome.
Trump's insistence of voter fraud contributed to 1,500 of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many were convicted of crimes but were ultimately pardoned on Trump's first day in office. Friday night, the Justice Department fired at least three prosecutors involved in the Capitol riot cases.
Becker noted firings in the agency are worrisome.
"If you normalize this reshaping of the entire federal civil service in key agencies, based solely upon loyalty, that is soon going to become the new normal," Becker cautioned. "We're going to see it done by both parties, and that will be to the detriment of us as Americans."
One of the biggest proponents of the myth that the 2020 election was stolen was MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, recently found guilty of defamation by a Denver jury. Lindell claimed Dominion Voting Systems manipulated voting machines to favor Joe Biden and called a former employee a traitor. Becker noted Lindell is one of many who've made huge claims without concrete evidence.
"It is easy to grandstand on the steps of a courthouse or on social media," Becker acknowledged. "But every single time they've been asked to put up or shut up in a court of law, where their evidence would be subjected to scrutiny, they have shut up."