Democrats used a fake quote that was incorrectly attributed to former President Donald Trump during the impeachment trial.
The Washington Post misquoted Trump in a report originally published in January about a phone call the former president had with the chief investigator of the Georgia secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson. The article accused Trump of telling Watson to “find the fraud” in the 2020 election and telling her that she would be “a national hero” if she found any.
Published audio from the phone call revealed that Trump was misquoted in the article and the Washington Post issued a lengthy correction as well as a subsequent report. The incorrect information about Trump’s quotes came from an anonymous source, the Post said. (RELATED: Trump: Georgia Gov. Could Stop Voter Fraud ‘If He Knew What The Hell He Was Doing’)
A clip shows that Democrats used the fake quote during Trump’s impeachment trial.
“On December 23, Trump called the chief investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who was conducting an audit – an audit of the signature matching procedures for absentee ballots,” Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean said during the trial. “Trump urged him, ‘find the fraud,’ and claimed the official would be ‘a national hero’ if he did.”
FLASHBACK: Democrats used the fake Washington Post “find the fraud” quote that was retracted today in the Trump impeachment trial
pic.twitter.com/45G70wLaYf— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 15, 2021
“Let’s call this what it is – he was asking the official to say there was evidence of fraud when there wasn’t any,” Dean continued. “The official refused and the investigation was completed.”
The quote was also used in the impeachment trial brief. On pages 12 & 13, the brief states: “President Trump’s campaign to reverse the election results – and to keep himself in the White House – lasted through the days immediately preceding the assault on the Capitol. On December 23, for instance, President Trump reportedly called one of Georgia’s lead election investigators, urging him to “find the fraud” and claiming that the official would be a “national hero” if he did so.”
The brief included a footnote citing the Washington Post’s report from Jan. 29.
The Washington Post’s correction states that “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so.”
“Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there,” the correction reads. “He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now.'”
Democrats cited Trump’s repeated assertions that the 2020 election was fraudulent as one of the reasons for impeachment during his second trial. The House of Representatives voted to impeach the former president in January, but the Senate declined to convict him.