Many were stunned Thursday evening when Donald Trump appeared to admit to engaging in what one noted legal expert called “fraud” during the 2018 election in Florida, in a massive rant he posted to his Truth Social platform.
“I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen,” Trump wrote, referring to Ron DeSantis’ 2018 gubernatorial win.
Trump had unleashed his anger at Ron DeSantis, after the Florida Republican governor refused to say he would not run against the former president.
In one of a series of 10 posts, Trump states:
“…I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat [Democrat Andrew] Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen…”
Andrew Weissman, the well known former General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, tweeted, “last I checked Trump’s sending in FBI and DOJ to interfere with election tabulation would be, well, fraud.”
Weissman is also a DOJ veteran of 20 years, and, among other roles, served as chief of the Criminal Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the 2017 special counsel team headed by Robert Mueller.
NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins via Twitter asked, “Am I losing my mind? Is this not a gigantic deal? He’s either casually admitting to using federal agents to interfere in a state election or lying about it for some equally inexplicable reason, right? Am I reading this wrong or is this a five-alarmer for the DOJ?”
The Rachel Maddow Show’s Maddow Blog retweeted Collins’ original tweet.
Politico’s Eric Geller also retweeted Collins’ tweet, adding: “Merrick Garland, call your office.”
Journalist Marcy Wheeler tweets, “Trump APPEARS to claim that he used DOJ resources to help DeSantis win in 2018.”