Following President Donald Trump’s speech focused on claims of fraud in the 2020 election, Cato Institute election experts are available for expert commentary and have released the following statements:

Stephen Richer, former recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, and a legal fellow with Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies:

“President Trump’s speech last night on election administration surprised me. He didn’t relitigate the 2020 election (although he did say we “can never watch a stolen election again”). He didn’t attack Georgia, as many had predicted. He had some criticisms of election administrators, but many more criticisms of his first term’s national security and law enforcement teams (it’s safe to say Trump hates Chris Krebs, his former director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure). And he didn’t announce radical steps like the federal control of election administration (at least not yet).

“But the biggest surprise: the documents shared by the White House refuted, or failed to support, Trump’s speech. It’s even more remarkable that these are the documents the White House chose to share on its opening night – the biggest night – and they are very bad for Trump’s claims. I can only assume further document releases will be even worse for Trump.”

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies:

“Donald Trump, the sorest loser in American presidential history, is out with a rewarmed farrago of nonsensical, oft-refuted, and fanciful theories seeking to deny his 2020 election loss. His own federal agencies studied the role of foreign powers at the time and no such powers changed the result. Trump displays a sinister zeal in his efforts to undermine Americans’ confidence in our election system, but the Constitution gives him no power to replace it with any other system.”

Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute:

“When the alleged intelligence documents released by the White House are stamped ‘Declassified by counsel to the President’ or ‘Declassified by President Trump,’ that’s the clue that the documents have been released selectively and for explicitly partisan political purposes…and it is that very politicized process that raises fundamental questions about the authenticity of the documents and the President’s claims about them.”

To speak with Cato scholars on President Trump’s speech, contact Christopher Tarvardian.