Former President Donald Trump’s campaign hired a research firm in 2020 in an attempt to prove claims of election fraud and never released the group’s findings when the results failed to validate the former commander-in-chief’s allegations, according to a report.
The Trump campaign commissioned Berkeley Research Group in the final weeks of 2020 to conduct the study into alleged electoral fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to the Washington Post.
Researchers looked into claims of malfunctioning voting machines, dead people voting, illegal immigrants voting, people voting twice – anything that could prove Trump should have won the 2020 election.
“If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it,” a person familiar with the study told the Washington Post.
The study, done through a Berkeley Research Group subsidiary, cost the campaign more than $600,000, according to the report.
Researchers briefed Trump, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others on their findings in December of 2020, explaining to them they did not believe the anomalies discovered were significant enough to make a difference in the outcome of the election. Also, no evidence was found to support Trump’s claims of rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting.
“Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions,” a person familiar with the study told the outlet.
Meadows was reportedly skeptical of the group’s findings and Trump also continued to maintain that he won the election during the call, which was described as “contentious.”
Some Trump advisers hoped that the Berkeley Research Group might suppress false claims of election malfeasance, but the then-president and several of his associates continued to peddle false theories even after the report’s findings were revealed.
The report was never made public or used in Trump’s court battles over the 2020 election results.
The 76-year-old former president’s in under federal investigation for his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump is also being investigated in Georgia for alleged attempts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State.