Trump is using election lies to lay the groundwork for challenging 2024 results if he loses

Former President Trump, at a rally last month in North Carolina, has made election lies central to his campaign, issuing false warnings about fraud and threatening retribution against people he sees as standing in his way. Since the vice president took a day off from the campaign trail to sit for interviews with Telemundo and NBC, he has repeatedly said, “Maybe she knows something we don’t know.” In Michigan, he suggested there was no way Harris would be campaigning with Beyoncé — one of the biggest stars in the world — if the race were as close as polls suggest. But Trump fanned fears of his own inside planning at a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden when he looked at House Speaker Mike Johnson and talked about their “little secret.” Johnson, before becoming speaker, took the lead in drafting a widely panned brief seeking to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory, and echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories in an effort to explain away Trump’s loss. Asked after the Madison Square Garden rally about Trump’s reference to a “little secret,” Johnson issued a statement that included the following: “By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one.” Trump’s campaign issued a statement noting the former president had “done countless tele-rallies” to help bolster Republican congressional candidates.) Threats of prosecution THE CLAIM: Trump has threatened severe consequences for those he accuses of “unscrupulous behavior.” In one social media post making false claims about cheating, he warned about prosecuting those supposedly involved “to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.” The posts go on to threaten adversaries, including election officials, lawyers and donors, who he says “will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” THE FACTS: Judges, election officials and even William Barr, Trump’s onetime attorney general, have all affirmed that there was no widespread cheating in the 2020 election.