Former Trump acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker baselessly peddled a conspiracy on Wednesday that “thousands of dead voters” in Nevada voted in this past election, a false claim that Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner did not push back on or refute.
With President Donald Trump continuing to push forward with his long-shot legal challenges to President-elect Joe Biden’s clear-cut victory, Whitaker was asked by Faulkner on Wednesday afternoon if he saw any avenues for the president to overturn the election results in several key states.
“In each case, there are going to be judicial proceedings that are going to generate facts and then legal analysis. Each one will play its way through the courts,” Whitaker responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that ultimately there will be a winner and there will be a loser. I think right now we need to trust that the process will work and all sides will be heard and all voters that cast a legal vote will have their votes counted.”
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Whitaker, a Trump loyalist who briefly served as the acting attorney general after the president fired Jeff Sessions, suggested that the Trump campaign has compiled a great deal of evidence for its lawsuits, pointing to the “affidavits filed by people that observed things that happened on Election Day.” (Judges have already dismissed several lawsuits, saying Team Trump’s affidavits show no evidence of wrongdoing.)
After the ex-AG said the legal proceedings need to play out in order to achieve an “orderly transition of power,” Faulkner jumped in to note that this situation was similar to the previous election.
“We saw it with Hillary Clinton,” she declared. “She conceded but Democrats pressed ahead with lawsuits. A Democrat appointed by President Trump says ‘the 2020 general election was one of the smoothest and most well-run elections we have seen, and that is remarkable considering all the challenges.’ What is your reaction to that?”
Whitaker, meanwhile, took that opportunity to toss out a completely unfounded claim of widespread voter fraud.
“Well, again, I think we have places like Nevada where thousands of dead voters voted who shouldn’t have. There were other potential illegal votes. Each of these needs to be adjudicated and see if it makes a difference in the outcome.”
He went on to say that “there are still states too close to call” and that “when you get down to small margins, every legal vote matters,” adding that if “there are illegal votes we need to make sure those don’t skew the votes.”
Faulkner, however, just let Whitaker’s false allegations slide, instead ending the segment by noting the pandemic complicated matters this election before asking “what could we have changed early on to make a difference.”
Whitaker’s claims about Nevada, meanwhile, have no basis in fact. Despite the president’s campaign making unsubstantiated allegations of massive fraud in Nevada—where Biden currently holds a 36,000+ vote lead—Trump’s lawyers have only presented evidence of one possible case of fraud in the state, and it still remains unproven. Even the Trump administration’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency disputes votes are being cast and counted on behalf of dead people.
The Trump campaign has also alleged that over 3,000 voters from out of state “improperly cast” absentee ballots in Nevada. A closer review, however, shows that Team Trump’s list includes hundreds of military addresses, indicating the list largely consists of military personnel stationed elsewhere and voting in their home state.
Over the past few days, since Fox News joined other networks in calling the race for Biden, many of Fox News’ anchors and legal analysts have pushed back and disputed the Trump campaign’s assertion that Trump actually won the election and was the victim of widespread election fraud. At the same time, however, the network’s Trump-boosting hosts and commentators have amplified and backed the president’s stolen election rhetoric.
