Donald Trump was so determined to push voter fraud claims after his 2020 election loss that he ignored former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel’s warning that his Dominion voting machines report was “f---ing nuts.”
That’s according to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page brief that was partially unsealed Wednesday, exposing a trove of damning allegations against the former president just over a month before Election Day.
The brief detailed Trump’s alleged behind-the-scene’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Key to Trump’s so-called “Big Lie” was to prove that Dominion voting machines were manipulated in states such as Michigan.
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Trump’s team, which included MAGA world mainstays like Rudy Giuliani, conjured up a “private report” that supposedly proved Dominion machines in northern Michigan’s Antrim County were compromised.
Smith’s brief claimed that Trump’s team took the report to McDaniel, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, and asked her to publicize it.
The relationship between Ronna McDaniel and Donald Trump, photographed above in 2018, was never the same after she didn’t buy in to his election-denying claims.
ReutersSmith’s brief said McDaniel “refused” Trump’s request in December and advised the then-president that she’d already discussed it with the speaker of the Michigan House, a Republican, who gave the “exact assessment” that the “report was f---ing nuts.”
Even without the RNC’s blessing, Trump and his team allegedly pushed forward with lies about Dominion machines—only to be met with more resistance. Among those who offered a similar assessment was Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who Trump infamously called on Jan. 2, 2021, and asked him to “find 11,780 votes.”
A portion of Raffensperger’s response to Trump, which was previously made public by The Washington Post, was included in Smith’s brief: “I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result.”
As a result, Trump reportedly had a harsh falling out with both McDaniel and Raffensperger for not buying into his voter fraud crusade. Raffensperger was re-elected in 2022, despite his public rift with Trump, but McDaniel resigned from the RNC in February as Trump began his takeover of the national party by installing his family and pals into key roles.
