In an angry rant Thursday night Donald Trump appeared to admit to using the U.S. Dept. of Justice to engage in election interference in the 2018 Florida election to help Republican Ron DeSantis, who was declared the winner in that gubernatorial race.
“I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys,” Trump bragged on his Truth Social platform. One noted former top DOJ official suggested it could be “fraud.”
Democrat Andrew Gillum, who lost to DeSantis by a slim 0.4% margin, or about 32,000 votes, is now demanding his day in court.
“I was all in for Ron,” Trump wrote, which NCRM was among the first to report, “and he beat 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.”
Gillum’s attorneys wasted no time in acting.
“David Markus and Katherine Miller, who are representing Gillum on federal public corruption charges involving donations to his gubernatorial campaign,” Tallahassee Democrat reports, “cited Trump’s statement in a motion filed Friday in federal court saying it further supported their request for a hearing on whether the federal government selectively prosecuted Gillum because of his race. His lawyers asked for the hearing on Election Day motions that also sought dismissals on all counts.”
“Lawyers for Gillum said Trump’s statement supports a ‘prima facie case of selective prosecution (at a minimum for political purposes), because Donald Trump confirms that he took action through the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office.'”
In his rant, Trump – who has been falsely alleging election fraud for years, claimed Thursday night with no evidence or proof that there had been election fraud in 2018, or “ballot theft,” as he put it.
“Former President Trump’s posts raise serious questions about how exactly Trump ‘fixed’ DeSantis’ campaign and what Trump directed the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to do, and whether there is any connection to the FBI’s investigation and later prosecution of Gillum,” Gillum’s lawyers said in their motion.
Thursday night, as NCRM reported, Andrew Weissman, the well known former General Counsel of the FBI, 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.
On Friday, Factcheck.org investigated Trump’s remarks and the situation in 2018.
“In 2018, DeSantis was declared the winner by the Associated Press on election night, which was Nov. 6, 2018. Gillum conceded defeat at about 11 p.m. that night, according to the New York Times. But with votes still being counted, Gillum closed the gap and the race was within the range of a recount by Nov. 8, 2018.”