After Democrat Joe Biden was announced the winner of the 2020 presidential race, U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign sent dozens of emails to supporters asking for donations to supposedly fight the election's outcome.
The fundraising messages (fact-checked in detail below) obtained by Snopes alleged sporadic or extensive voter fraud, but offered no evidence and distorted or misrepresented facts about the country's elections process under state and federal laws. The campaign also contradicted the Trump administration's own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which announced on Nov. 12 that the Biden-Trump election was the "most secure in American history."
We should note here: Emails from Trump's campaign asked supporters to chip in to a so-called "Official Election Defense Fund" or "Election Defense Task Force," both of which the campaign framed as costly initiatives involving ballot recounts or various lawsuits to challenge Biden's win.
But according to Brendan Fischer, director of the federal reform program at Campaign Legal Center, the average donor's money was not covering those expenses. "Small donors who give to Trump thinking they are financing an 'official election defense fund' are in fact helping pay down the Trump campaign’s debt or funding his post-presidential political operation," Fischer tweeted.
Additionally, legal experts have said Trump's various lawsuits do not contain enough evidence to reverse the election results in a single state, much less the entire election.
Still, for weeks after Election Day, the Trump campaign continued to distribute urgent calls for money alongside several misleading or false claims attempting to sow doubt and confusion over Biden's victory. Here are some of those allegations:
