Conservative Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg said there was “never” an instance in which a court found that Trump’s campaign’s fraud claims were credible.
“There was never that instance. In all the the cases that were brought in — and I looked at more than 60 that include more than 180 counts. And no, the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case,” he told the committee.
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California said the select committee has identified 62 post-election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and his allies between Nov. 4, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021. Lofgren said those cases resulted in 61 losses and “only a single victory which actually didn’t affect the outcome for either candidate.”
Asked what he thinks of the claims that Trump was not given an opportunity to provide evidence they had voter fraud and whether they had their day in court, Ginsberg said, “They did have their day in court. About half of those cases that you mentioned were dismissed at the procedural stage for a lack of standing, the proper people didn’t bring the case, or there wasn’t sufficient evidence and it got dismissed on a motion to dismiss.”
“But in the other, there were discussions of the merits that were contained in the complaints. And in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real. And it’s also worth noting that even if the Trump campaign complained that it did not have its day in court, there had been post-election reviews in each of the six battleground states that could have made a difference,” he told the committee. He went on to list list examples, including the hand recount in Georgia.
“In each one of those instances, there was no credible evidence of fraud produced by the Trump campaign or his supporters,” he added.
More on the witness: Ginsberg is considered a leading Republican expert on election fraud and played a critical role in the Florida recount case when then-candidate George W. Bush defeated then-Vice President Al Gore.
Even before the election, Ginsberg was vocal about the weakness of the former President’s claims. In a September 2020 essay, Ginsberg criticized the assertions as lacking evidence and “unsustainable.”
The hearing on Monday morning was set to focus on how Trump questioned the election process widely, knowing their assertions would not change the outcome, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming, said last week.
She said the committee will strive to show how “Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information” even though “Trump and his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election.”
CNN’s Jamie Gangel contributed reporting to this post.
