President Donald Trump on Friday cited an unfinished report by a little-known group focused on rooting out voter fraud to bolster his baseless claim that millions of undocumented immigrants cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election.
“Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand,” Trump tweeted. “Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal.”
Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2017
Phillips is the self-proclaimed founder of VoteStand.com, a voter fraud reporting app. He first made the claim that “more than three million” votes were cast by non-citizens in November, when it was picked up and heavily promoted by conspiracy site Infowars. The Infowars story cited a report from VoteFraud.org, though no such report was ever produced, and was predominantly based off several tweets from Phillips.
Phillips said at the time that he was still analyzing the data he had collected, refusing to offer additional information about his methodology. He was similarly evasive during a Friday morning interview on CNN’s “New Day,” when host Chris Cuomo repeatedly asked why Americans should believe his reporting if he won’t show his “method or means or analysis.”
“Whether you have information or not doesn’t mean I don’t have the information,” Phillips said. “Truth is truth, irrespective.”
Phillips said he would release his full investigation “when the time is right.”
The former Mississippi official claimed in a separate interview with the Clarion-Ledger this week that he has received death threats over his unsubstantiated claims about non-citizens voting.
Elections experts say that there is no evidence for widespread voter fraud, and the National Association of Secretaries of State said this week that they had no “evidence” to support claims about undocumented immigrants voting.
The President has continued to push this myth since taking office, telling congressional leaders last week that he lost the popular vote because 3 to 5 million “illegals” voted. He announced plans to sign an executive order launching an investigation into these allegations.
As CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, Trump’s tweet about VoteStand came less than an hour after the “New Day” interview. The President has on multiple occasions this week made declarations on issues from the commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence to crime in Chicago shortly after cable news segments covered those issues.
