CNN
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Former President Donald Trump and Home Speaker Mike Johnson raised issues Friday concerning the integrity of US elections in a joint look at Mar-a-Lago that featured false claims about voting, immigration and different subjects.
Trump’s crew billed the occasion as being about “election integrity”– a phrase he typically makes use of to explain the lie that the 2020 election was rigged, in addition to his unfounded claims about future mass voter fraud.
Right here’s a breakdown of a number of the false claims from their remarks.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson raised baseless issues about “probably a whole lot of 1000’s of votes” being solid by undocumented immigrants within the November presidential election.
“If a person solely asserts or just states that they’re a citizen, they don’t need to show it, and so they can register that particular person to vote in a federal election,” Johnson mentioned, including that “we solely need US residents to vote in US elections.”
To unravel this subject, which he referred to as a “significant issue,” Johnson mentioned Home Republicans would suggest a invoice that requires folks to instantly present proof of US citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections.
Information First: The system, as it’s presently arrange, is working, and successfully prevents mass voting by non-citizens in US elections. Regardless of Johnson’s give attention to this subject, this can be very uncommon, based on a long time of voting knowledge and nonpartisan consultants. It’s so unusual that voting consultants don’t see it as an issue plaguing US elections.
In federal and state elections, the place voting by non-citizens is unlawful, it happens on a microscopic degree. (It’s true {that a} handful of municipalities have handed legal guidelines letting non-citizens take part in native elections, like for varsity board. However this wasn’t the main focus of Johnson’s issues about federal elections.)
When folks register to vote, they need to present a driver’s license or social safety quantity, and their identification is checked in opposition to current databases. Voters are required to swear below penalty of perjury that they’re a US citizen, and a number of federal legal guidelines make it unlawful for non-citizens to vote, which might result in imprisonment or deportation.
This technique, as proven from a long time of knowledge, could be very efficient at stopping non-citizens from registering and voting in federal elections.
“It occurs virtually by no means,” mentioned David Becker, founding father of the nonpartisan Heart for Election Innovation & Analysis. “Making one thing unlawful doesn’t cease it from occurring, however we all know how typically it occurs, and it’s extraordinarily uncommon. This can be a downside that could be very small. And it has virtually at all times occurred due to a misunderstanding.”
The best-leaning Heritage Basis’s database of confirmed fraud instances lists lower than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid multiple billion lawfully solid ballots. And the left-leaning Brennan Heart for Justice analyzed greater than 23 million votes from the 2016 election and located an estimated 30 examples.
Additional, from a common sense perspective, there’s little to achieve for an undocumented immigrant who theoretically needs to vote in a presidential election. There’s virtually no probability their single poll would tip the outcomes, and so they’d be risking the whole lot to do it.
“The penalties are excessive, and the payoff is low,” mentioned Rick Hasen, an election regulation knowledgeable on the UCLA Faculty of Regulation. “In the event you aren’t a citizen and also you vote, and also you’re caught, you possibly can face deportation and felony penalties. And your probabilities of affecting an election end result are small. It’s impossible somebody would purposely select to vote as a noncitizen.”
Hasen, a Trump critic, mentioned, “if we had an enormous downside on this nation with non-citizen voting, perhaps that might justify greater than an affidavit, swearing to their citizenship standing. However as a result of we don’t have an enormous downside, we don’t have to put impediments within the path of greater than 99% of voters who’re certified.
Trump has a protracted historical past of spreading false claims about overseas nationals voting in US elections. Most famously, he claimed “tens of millions” of undocumented immigrants solid ballots in 2016, a brazen lie that he used to clarify why he lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
From CNN’s Marshall Cohen
Trump claimed that “tens of millions and tens of millions” of individuals, together with terrorists and other people from jails and psychological establishments have come illegally to the US from international locations like Venezuela and “the Congo.”
Information First: There isn’t any proof for Trump’s repeated claims that any coutries, a lot much less “the Congo” and Venezuela, have emptied prisons and mental health institutions to permit violent criminals to return to the US border as migrants.
Final yr, Trump’s marketing campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower declare on the time that South American international locations had been emptying psychological well being services to someway dump sufferers upon the US. Consultants on the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, plus each pro-immigration and anti-immigration organizations within the US have also told CNN they have not seen any evidence of Congolese prisons being emptied.
From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn and Daniel Dale
Trump baselessly claimed – as he often does – that Biden is secretly orchestrating the New York state felony case in opposition to him, which is ready to go to trial on Monday.
“That’s election interference by the Biden administration,” Trump mentioned. “They really took their prime man, one in every of their prime guys, put him into the D.A.’s workplace to run it, and it’s a disgrace.”
Trump is referring to the truth that Matthew Colangelo, who had served as a senior Justice Division official below Biden, left the division in 2022 for a job within the workplace of the Manhattan District Lawyer who’s prosecuting the case, Alvin Bragg.
Information First: There isn’t any foundation for Trump’s claims that the trials in opposition to him have been directed by Biden in an effort to intervene with the election.
First, there is no such thing as a proof that Biden, his White Home or his Justice Division has had any position in launching or working Bragg’s case, not to mention that Biden operatives are issuing secret instructions within the case – and Bragg is a regionally elected official who doesn’t report back to the federal authorities.
There’s additionally no proof the White Home or the Biden administration had something to do with Colangelo’s decision to leave the Justice Department and join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg; Colangelo and Bragg had been colleagues earlier than Bragg was elected Manhattan district legal professional in 2021.
From CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Daniel Dale
Trump mentioned “tens of millions and tens of millions of individuals are pouring in (to the US) … We most likely have 15 million (migrants).”
Information First: Trump’s determine about what number of migrants have crossed the border below the Biden administration is inflated.
As of March, US Customs and Border Safety has recorded practically 9.4 million border encounters nationwide since President Joe Biden took workplace in January 2021.
Whereas tens of millions of individuals are not “pouring” into the US at one time, the nation continues to grapple with a migrant surge on the southern border.
From CNN’s Danya Gainor
At an look in Mar A Lago with Home Speaker Mike Johnson, former President Donald Trump touted that “we broke Roe V. Wade” and claimed that each “authorized scholar” wished it overturned.
Information First: Trump’s declare that “each authorized scholar” wished Roe overturned just isn’t true. Many wished Roe preserved, as a number of authorized students reiterated in feedback to CNN earlier this week.
Learn extra from those legal scholars here.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn