An expert hired by Donald Trump to substantiate the former president’s voter fraud claims regarding the 2020 presidential election called him out for continuing to peddle falsehoods. Trump in November of 2020, shortly after losing the election, entered into a contract with Ken Block of Simpatico Software Systems, according to The Washington Post. However, Block on Tuesday penned an op-ed for USA Today asserting that his research never yielded anything to support Trump’s claims — and instead wholly debunked them. 

“I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign,” Block wrote. “The findings of my company’s in-depth analysis are detailed in the depositions taken by the Selection Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The transcripts show that the campaign found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election. That message was communicated directly to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.” He then underscored the “steady diet of lies and innuendo” that the ex-president has used in an effort to “overcome the truth,” before noting that the “cries that the election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping.”

“The constant drumbeat hardens people’s hearts and minds to the truth about the 2020 election. Emails and documents show that the voter data available to the campaign contained no evidence of large-scale voter fraud based on data mining and fraud analytics,” he wrote. “More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false, including proof of why those claims were disproven.” Block also noted that his investigation’s findings have been shared with special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, both of whom have criminally charged Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. “What these claims don’t take into account is that voter fraud is detectable, quantifiable and verifiable. I have yet to see anyone offer up ‘evidence’ of voter fraud from the 2020 election that provides these three things,” Block continued. “My company’s contract with the campaign obligated us to deliver evidence of voter fraud that could be defended in a court of law. The small amount of voter fraud I found was bipartisan, with about as many Republicans casting duplicate votes as Democrats.”

“As a former gubernatorial candidate,” Block added, “I can admire the discipline it takes to stay on message on a single issue. There is no doubt that voter fraud can animate people. But it is one thing to provide a rallying point for supporters and quite another to drag our election infrastructure and legal system into a foundationless set of false claims.” He concluded: “A better use of time, money and energy would be to address systemic weaknesses in our election systems – such as the distressing lack of national election infrastructure to enforce election integrity, destructive practices to our elections such as gerrymandering, and leveling the playing field so that our elections become fairer and more competitive. If voter fraud had impacted the 2020 election, it would already have been proven. Maintaining the lies undermines faith in the foundation of our democracy.”

In a speech at a Michigan auto parts plant, former President Donald Trump distorted the facts about electric vehicles and the U.S. auto industry.

• Trump said President Joe Biden “has dictated that nearly 70% of all cars” made in the U.S. must be “fully electric” in 10 years. The administration cannot mandate how many cars must be all-electric. It proposed new emission standards, and how the industry meets the new rules is up to them.

• We found no support for Trump’s claim that the proposed rules would kill 40% of the auto industry’s jobs. Instead, Ford’s CEO said EVs take 40% less labor to make, but the company would offset job losses by making its own EV parts.

• Trump claimed all-electric vehicles can only “drive for 15 minutes before you have to get a charge.” Most EVs have a range of 110 to 300 miles, with some expensive models reaching 400 to 500 miles.

• He claimed EVs are “bad … for the environment.” But studies show that electric cars produce less pollution over their entire lifespan than gas-powered vehicles.

• He said Ford expects to lose $4.5 billion on EVs. The company projected that loss for this year but expects to make a profit on EVs by the end of 2026.

• Trump falsely claimed he “saved American auto manufacturing” after “eight long years of [Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden.” The Obama administration helped rescue the industry, which increased the number of motor vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan by 79,600, or 83%, in those eight years.

Trump’s speech, which he delivered on Sept. 27 in lieu of attending a GOP primary debate, came during a strike by the United Auto Workers union against Ford Motor Co., Stellantis NV and General Motors Co. Trump delivered his remarks at a nonunion plant, Drake Enterprises, which manufactures driveline and transmission parts.

Michigan was a key swing state in Trump’s last two presidential elections — he won the state in 2016, but lost it in 2020 — and it is expected to be a critical state again next year.

EPA Proposal Not a Mandate

Trump mischaracterized regulations proposed by the Biden administration to reduce pollution from motor vehicles.

“Biden’s job-killing EV mandate has dictated that nearly 70% of all cars sold in the United States must be fully electric less than 10 years from now,” Trump said.

Not exactly. As the New York Times wrote in April, “The E.P.A. cannot mandate that carmakers sell a certain number of electric vehicles.”

Instead, that month, the Environmental Protection Agency introduced new proposed rules that would significantly restrict the amount of emissions from light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which includes passenger cars, trucks and large pickups and vans. If approved, the proposed standards, with some exceptions, would phase in starting in 2027.

In a statement at the time, the EPA said the new standards are “projected to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles,” which “could account for 67% of new light-duty vehicle sales and 46% of new medium-duty vehicle sales” in 2032. But that depends on “the compliance pathways manufacturers select to meet the standards,” the agency said.

In theory, automakers could find other ways to meet the emissions targets without having to produce as many EVs, as Joseph Goffman, principal deputy assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, wrote in prepared testimony for Congress in June.

“The proposed standards are performance-based emissions standards and are technology neutral, meaning that manufacturers can choose the mix of technologies (including internal combustion technologies) that they believe would be best suited for their fleet to meet the standards and to meet the needs of American drivers,” his opening statement said.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing the big automakers, said it would be difficult to meet the standards in the time proposed by the rules.

Auto Jobs and the Transition to EVs

Trump made several claims about an increase in U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing and the loss of auto industry jobs. He claimed, “By most estimates, under Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, 40% of all U.S. auto jobs will disappear … in one or two years.” That figure may be from Ford’s CEO saying it takes 40% less labor to make an EV than a gas-powered vehicle, but the CEO went on to say the company wants to manufacture its own EV parts to offset those job losses.

We don’t know where Trump got his 40% figure; the campaign didn’t respond to our request for support.

However, last November Ford President and CEO Jim Farley told reporters: “It takes 40 per cent less labour to make an electric car, so . . . we have to insource, so that everyone has a role in this growth,” according to the Financial Times. “We have a whole new supply chain to roll out, in batteries and motors and electronics, and diversity has to play an even greater role in that,” he said at a conference sponsored by the civil rights group Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Other media also reported on Farley’s 40% figure. “Ford Motor is attempting to build as many of its own parts as possible for its electric vehicles to offset an expected 40% reduction in workers needed to build such cars and trucks, CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday,” CNBC reported on Nov. 15.

CNBC, Nov. 15, 2022: In addition to making sense for the business, he said retaining the jobs and workforce is another reason Ford wants to build more parts in-house rather than purchasing them from suppliers.

He said Ford plans to build such businesses rather than acquire them. For its increasingly popular Mustang Mach-E crossover, the company purchased motors and batteries. Going forward, Farley said that will no longer be the case.

In 2021, Ford announced an $11.4 billion investment in facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee to build EV batteries and vehicles. The company said the plants would create 11,000 jobs. Earlier this year, Ford announced an EV battery plant in Michigan, but it paused construction last week while the company and the UAW negotiate a contract. Union representation among these new battery plant workers has been a point of contention between the UAW and the automakers.

In remarks on Sept. 29 on the contract talks, Farley said: “None of our workers today are going to lose their jobs due to our battery plants during this contract period and even beyond the contract. In fact, for the foreseeable future we will have to hire more workers as some workers retire, in order to keep up with demand.”

We were unable to find another potential source for Trump’s 40% figure. At other points in his speech, he claimed the transition to EVs, pushed by the Biden administration’s proposed rule, would kill “hundreds of thousands of American jobs” or even that the rule “will spell the death of the U.S. auto industry.” Estimates vary on the potential impact of more EV production in the U.S., and the estimates depend on the researchers’ assumptions.

The America First Policy Institute, whose leadership includes former Trump administration officials, said “at least 117,000” net auto manufacturing jobs would be lost if EVs made up 67% of U.S. vehicle sales by 2032. It doesn’t consider offsets from battery manufacturing jobs. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has estimated a loss of 75,000 jobs with EVs making up half of U.S. vehicle sales by 2030 — without efforts to offset such losses. “These losses would stem from policy failures that stunted investment in domestic capacity of U.S. producers to build the batteries and drivetrains of BEVs [battery electric vehicles], and from a failure to regain market share in overall vehicle sales,” said EPI, which is partly funded by labor unions.

The group said that by implementing other policies to substantially increase EV component manufacturing, the auto industry could gain 150,000 jobs.

The Range and Cost of EVs

Trump also complained that EVs “don’t go far enough” and are “far too expensive” for most people. He said going “all electric” would mean “you can drive for 15 minutes before you have to get a charge.”

Actually, most all-electric vehicles can travel between 110 and over 300 miles on a fully-charged battery, depending on the model, according to the Department of Energy.

In EPA testing, some more expensive models can go 400 or 500 miles on a single charge.

Even many plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, can go between 15 and 60 miles on battery power alone before they need to be recharged. For PHEVs, “their overall range is determined by the fuel tank capacity because the engine kicks in when the battery is depleted,” the Energy Department says.

For instance, the Jeep Wrangler 4xe, the best-selling plug-in hybrid in the U.S. in 2022, can go 21 miles in electric-only mode, according to its manufacturer. The Toyota RAV4 Prime, another popular PHEV, has an all-electric driving range of 42 miles, according to estimates.

In terms of miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent, a fuel-efficiency measurement for electric and hybrid cars, the Wrangler 4xe has an estimated 49 MPGe and the RAV4 Prime gets an estimated 94 MPGe.

Driving conditions, driving habits and battery size are some of the factors that also affect the travel range of EVs.

As for the cost, the retail price suggested by manufacturers for all-electric cars starts at roughly $28,000, the DOE says. But, in August, the average price paid for an electric vehicle was $53,376, according to Kelley Blue Book, a company that does automotive research. That compared with an average transaction price of $48,451 for all new vehicles that month.

On the other hand, in most states, owners of electric cars, depending on the model, tend to pay less to operate and maintain their vehicles than people with gas-powered cars.

In addition, to encourage residents to purchase EVs, the federal government is providing tax credits of up to $7,500 for buying qualifying new models. For purchases of certain used models, the credits can be as much as $4,000. Some states also offer rebates and incentives for buying electric cars.

Environmental Impact

According to experts, electric cars produce less pollution over their entire lifespan than vehicles with an internal combustion engine. But Trump argued that the public is not aware of the environmental downsides of EVs.

“People have no idea how bad this is going to be also for the environment,” he said. “Those batteries, when they get rid of them and lots of bad things happen. When they’re digging it out of the ground to make those batteries, it’s going to be very bad for the environment.”

Trump has a point: Some analyses do show that the energy required to manufacture electric car batteries — which are often made of mined lithium, nickel and cobalt — can lead to greater carbon emissions than the production of gas-powered vehicles. Also, in many areas of the country, battery charging stations use electricity generated by fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, which further increases the carbon footprint of EVs.

But other studies demonstrate that EVs that run on electricity only, which have no tailpipe emissions, have far fewer life-cycle emissions than conventional cars that rely on gasoline or diesel. Such studies consider all stages in the life of a vehicle, from “extracting and processing raw materials through refining and manufacture to operation and eventual recycling or disposal,” as explained in a white paper published by the International Council on Clean Transportation.

For example, in a post about “electric vehicle myths,” the Environmental Protection Agency noted that a 2021 Argonne National Laboratory analysis of both a gasoline car and an EV with a 300-mile range found that, even when factoring in battery manufacturing, total greenhouse gas emissions for an EV were typically lower than those for the gasoline car.

Furthermore, while not easy, recycling the batteries, rather than simply disposing of them in landfills where they can leak toxins, “can reduce the emissions associated with making an EV by reducing the need for new materials,” the EPA says.

EV Investments

Trump said that “Ford alone is projecting to lose an astonishing $4.5 billion on electric vehicles.” Ford did estimate a $4.5 billion loss this year on its EVs — though overall, it expected to earn $11 billion to $12 billion companywide, according to its second quarter financial report.

Ford said the loss on EVs was due to “the pricing environment, disciplined investments in new products and capacity, and other costs.” But the company expects EVs to make money in the coming years. In July, Ford said it expected an 8% profit margin on EVs at the end of 2026, the company told us.

General Motors has said it expects its EV line to be profitable by 2025.

Trump Didn’t ‘Save’ U.S. Auto Manufacturing

In boasting about his record, Trump falsely claimed that he “saved American auto manufacturing” and wrongly suggested that he was responsible for an increase in auto manufacturing jobs in Michigan.

Trump, Sept. 27: I saved American auto manufacturing, you know that, in my first term, and I’ll save it again. We did great. We did everything to keep those jobs going.

In fact, as we’ve written before, Michigan lost motor vehicle manufacturing jobs and motor vehicle parts manufacturing jobs under Trump, and that was the case even before the COVID-19 pandemic caused economic shutdowns and job losses. (We will get to his claim about saving the industry later.)

As of February 2020, before the pandemic shutdowns began, motor vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan had fallen by 3,700 from January 2017, when Trump took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Motor vehicle manufacturing jobs declined from 43,300 in January 2017 to 40,500 in February 2020, while motor vehicle parts manufacturing jobs fell from 175,000 to 171,300.

Of course, the pandemic-induced shutdowns caused massive temporary job losses, beginning in March 2020 but most significantly in April 2020. By the time Trump left office, most of those job losses had been recovered. Still, when Trump left office in January 2021, the number of motor vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan had gone down by 8,700 over his entire term.

Nationwide, the number of motor vehicles and parts manufacturing jobs under Trump increased prior to the pandemic by 34,400, or 3.6%. Over his full four years, the U.S. lost 9,200 motor vehicles and parts manufacturing jobs.

As for his claim about saving the auto industry, the former president spoke more about that later in his speech. But, in doing so, he misrepresented the state of the industry when he took office from President Barack Obama.  

Trump, Sept. 27: When I came into office, the auto industry was on its knees, gasping its last breaths after eight long years of Obama and Biden. But you finally got a president who stood up to the … You got to understand, I stood up to people that hate you. They hate you or they maybe hate our country. But I stood up for you. I stood up for the auto workers and stood up for the great state of Michigan like nobody’s ever stood up before.

In fact, the auto industry was on its knees when Obama and Biden took office in January 2009, and it was the Bush and Obama administrations that can claim credit for saving the industry and its jobs.

Here’s what happened: With General Motors and Chrysler facing bankruptcy, outgoing President George W. Bush announced on Dec. 19, 2008, that his administration would provide both automakers with $13.4 billion in short-term financing from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. But, as the New York Times reported at the time, the companies each had “to produce a plan for long-term profitability, including concessions from unions, creditors, suppliers and dealers” by March 31, 2009.

Obama rejected the automakers’ viability plans on March 30, 2009. A short time later, Obama announced bankruptcy plans for Chrysler and GM that would allow the companies to restructure operations and receive additional federal assistance. In all, the U.S. automakers received about $80 billion in loans and equity investments under TARP’s Auto Industry Financing Program, or AIFP. Of that amount, the U.S. recouped $70.5 billion through loan repayments, equity sales, dividends, interest and other income, according to a November 2015 Government Accountability Office report.

The GAO report said the AIFP was created when “both GM and Chrysler were on the verge of collapse” that “threatened the overall economy as it could have led to a loss of as many as one million American jobs.” Instead of losing jobs, the industry saw tremendous job growth in Obama’s eight years.

From January 2009 to January 2017, the number of motor vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan had increased by 79,600, or 83%, according to BLS jobs data.

Nationwide, motor vehicles and parts manufacturing jobs under Obama increased by 270,300, or 39.5%.

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President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot — and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.

The total so far: $519 million.

The costs have mounted daily as government agencies at all levels have been forced to devote public funds to respond to actions taken by Trump and his supporters, according to a Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, as well as interviews with government officials. The expenditures include legal fees prompted by dozens of fruitless lawsuits, enhanced security in response to death threats against poll workers, and costly repairs needed after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. That attack triggered the expensive massing of thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington amid fears of additional extremist violence.

Although more than $480 million of the total is attributable to the military’s estimated expenses for the troop deployment through mid-March, the financial impact of the president’s refusal to concede the election is probably much higher than what has been documented thus far, and the true costs may never be known.

Many officials contacted by The Post said they were still trying to tally the cost of rapidly scaling up security to deal with the increased threat of violence from Trump supporters. Others have given up on trying to calculate their costs — perplexed over how to calculate the financial impact of a president’s injecting so much instability into the democratic system — opting instead to simply absorb them as the cost of doing business in the Trump era.

Costs identified by The Washington Post related to election misinformation

Some officials have shifted their attention to making plans for additional security measures going forward in the threatening environment fostered by Trump’s conspiratorial brand of politics.

“I think anytime you see an event like we saw on January 6th, it changes your perspective going forward. You don’t take things for granted like we used to,” said Michael Rapich, superintendent of the Utah Highway Patrol, which spent $227,000 on Jan. 17 to deploy 300 troopers to the state’s Capitol after threats of an armed siege by Trump supporters ahead of the inauguration of President Biden. “It is an incredible amount of money to spend.”

Other states spent even more, and officials are beginning to draft new security budgets that suggest ongoing security costs will grow significantly in the future as a result of the Capitol breach.

The bill to the federal government continues to grow daily, as thousands of National Guard troops patrol Washington and lawmakers consider a supplemental spending proposal to bolster their security.

The 25,000 troops that were deployed to Washington traveled on military planes and stayed in local hotels — their presence aimed at restoring order in the nation’s capital after an attempted insurrection that overwhelmed Capitol police and ended in five deaths. The cost estimate of the troops, first reported by Bloomberg News, covers the troop presence at the Capitol through mid-March, according to Defense Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal figures. With an unprecedented show of force that included checkpoints and militarized zones in Washington, the troops succeeded in thwarting efforts to disrupt Biden’s swearing-in, which took place on the same platform stormed by Trump-supporting rioters two weeks earlier.

Costs associated with Jan. 6 insurrection and after, including inauguration

It is not clear whether the House Democrats managing Trump’s impeachment trial plan to bring up the financial costs borne by taxpayers as a result of what critics have called his “big lie.” The trial begins Tuesday, and Democrats have focused heavily on Trump’s speech to supporters shortly before the Capitol riot.

A spokeswoman for Trump’s presidential office did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s defense lawyers have argued that he was within his rights to publicly question the election’s integrity and should not be held responsible for the actions of people who attacked the Capitol after his speech.

Several states are working to calculate the taxpayer costs for additional security and related expenses in the aftermath of the November election and the Jan. 6 protests.

In California, state officials estimated they spent about $19 million, deploying 1,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of state troopers from Jan. 14 to Jan. 21 to protect the state Capitol and other locations.

“That’s a lot of money, even by California standards, for one week’s worth of work,” California Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said in an interview. “But it was necessary work to make sure that we didn’t see the damage that could have occurred, had we had a crowd that was bent on doing damage to the building.”

In Ohio, taxpayers spent $1.2 million to deploy National Guard troops to the closed Statehouse building in Columbus. The New Mexico legislature increased its appropriation for Capitol security during the 60-day session by almost 40 percent this month, handing taxpayers a bill of $1.5 million for personnel, equipment and other expenses, officials said.

Taxpayers paid to deploy helicopters to monitor potential demonstrations in Texas and North Carolina, temporary fencing around the capitols in Lansing, Mich., and Olympia, Wash., and extra security details for state lawmakers attending legislative sessions.

D.C. police dispatched 850 officers to help defend the Capitol, spending more than $8.8 million during the week of Jan. 6, acting police chief Robert J. Contee III said in his opening statement before a closed session of the House Appropriations Committee on Jan. 26. Contee said the final tab will probably be much higher, and police and prosecutors will be “engaged for years” investigating and trying the rioters.

“The costs for this insurrection — both human and monetary — will be steep,” he said. “The immediate fiscal impact is still being calculated.”

For many states, the post-Jan. 6 costs added to a tab that has been growing since shortly after polls closed on Nov. 3. Trump’s false assertion that night that he had won the election and that it was being stolen in ballot-processing centers led to credible threats against poll workers and facilities where they were working. Between added legal fees to fend off conspiracy-theory-laced lawsuits from Trump and enhanced security for election officials, states’ costs resulting from the president’s central fabrication about the Nov. 3 vote have escalated rapidly.

States spent untold millions of dollars on election recounts not required by law but demanded by Trump and legal and state legislative hearings.

Protesters, some armed, amassed at ballot-processing centers in places such as Maricopa County, Ariz.; Detroit; and Las Vegas in the days after Nov. 3, echoing Trump’s rhetoric about a rigged election.

The added bill comes as many states are resource-strapped as a result of a pandemic that has wracked the economy and decimated state budgets.

State costs associated with Jan. 6 and pre-inauguration-related security

Chris Loftis, communications director for the Washington State Patrol, said the new “staggeringly high” costs for security and other expenses constituted “a wasteful distraction of essential and diminishing resources.”

Not included in the more than $4 million estimated security bill for Washington state taxpayers is the yet-to-be-determined cost of fixing a gate at the governor’s mansion broken by armed demonstrators on Jan. 6.

“Not only have our people, places and processes of democracy been attacked and damaged, but the continuing expense of this new security environment will take away from funds that could have been used for covid vaccines and treatment” and other critical expenses, Loftis said.

In Georgia, which faced a large share of Trump’s post-election fraud charges, officials conducted two recounts of the presidential vote. One was triggered by Biden’s narrow margin of victory over Trump, leading to a hand recount of all 5 million presidential ballots cast — the largest hand recount in U.S. history. The Trump campaign then requested another recount — this time, a machine rescan of those hand-recounted ballots. Both recounts reaffirmed Biden’s victory. They also added extra costs for staff time and the security of election administrators, who faced growing threats and, in some cases, required 24-hour police details.

In Fulton County, Georgia’s largest, taxpayers spent an estimated $500,000 on security alone for election officials, who faced harassment and threats fueled by conspiracy theories over the November election.

Other state and local officials spent funds to battle with Trump’s well-funded team of lawyers in court. Trump and his allies devoted more than $11 million to a failed legal effort that included dozens of lawsuits and repeated losses in court due to a lack of evidence. After the Nov. 3 election and through the end of December, Trump and the Republican Party paid at least 65 firms or lawyers on election-related legal challenges, according to federal campaign finance filings.

Costs related to state legal challenges and security for election officials

In Georgia, separate figures for the Trump-requested recount were not available as of deadline.

The state of Pennsylvania hired several private law firms to deal with the onslaught of election litigation, paying outside lawyers as much as $480 per hour to fight Trump’s claims of rigged voting.

How much taxpayers ultimately had to spend to beat back Trump’s efforts to delay certification or overturn the results remains unknown, because many state officials did not specifically track their legal expenses.

“Although difficult to quantify, many legal hours were invested by the secretary of state’s general counsel and attorneys with the New Mexico attorney general’s office in responding to the baseless lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign,” said Alex Curtas, a spokesman for the New Mexico secretary of state.

Many officials said that while they wished the cost incurred as a result of Trump’s baseless voter-fraud allegations could have gone to more productive purposes, they saw the expenses as necessary to defending democracy.

“Safety isn’t cheap. Preparedness isn’t cheap,” Loftis said. “But neither are the lives of the elected leaders and support staff that we have been protecting, the historic and symbolic buildings they work in or the processes of democracy they represent.”

Congress is also grappling with calculating the expected costs of cleaning up and shoring up the Capitol after rioters carrying Trump flags and wearing MAGA hats smashed windows, busted doors, destroyed light fixtures and sprayed graffiti. The hours-long clash between law enforcement and insurrectionists left the building with battle scars that could take months to assess and repair, officials said.

“Statues, murals, historic benches and original shutters all suffered varying degrees of damage — primarily from pepper spray accretions and residue from tear gas and fire extinguishers — that will require cleaning and conservation,” according to an initial assessment of the damage by the office of the architect of the Capitol, which is responsible for preserving and maintaining the Capitol complex.

An official estimate for repair and cleanup costs is still being compiled, said Laura Condeluci, a spokeswoman for the office.

Congressional officials are also trying to determine the costs for securing the Capitol going forward. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) requested a third-party review of security protocols for lawmakers and said she expected Congress to put forward a supplemental spending bill specifically for beefing up security for lawmakers. The $515 million annual budget of the Capitol Police is funded through congressional appropriations.

The agency, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how much the Jan. 6 riot cost, has placed many of its officers on 12-hour shifts and installed magnetometers and other additional security measures in recent weeks to deal with the increased threat of violence against lawmakers.

Acting Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman said in a Jan. 28 statement that “vast improvements” were needed for security in the future, including permanent fencing and backup forces in the vicinity of the Capitol complex.

The idea of creating a fence around the Capitol has received pushback from some congressional leaders and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), but it could ultimately be an expensive prospect if approved. The recent project to replace and upgrade the fencing around the White House complex, for example, cost about $64 million.

In the meantime, members of Congress are taking additional security measures on their own, ranging from bulletproof vests to private security details and surveillance cameras. Taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill, as lawmakers increasingly use their publicly funded Members’ Representational Allowances, known as “MRAs,” to protect themselves.

Pelosi has suggested that she wants the supplemental spending bill to cover much of those costs, so members can use the MRAs for their original purpose of serving constituents.

Pelosi has also encouraged lawmakers to attend post-traumatic counseling sessions organized in response to the riot. A spokesman for Pelosi did not respond to questions seeking the cost of the third-party security review, the counseling sessions or other ancillary expenses in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

Whatever their costs, those and other measures are expected to only grow over time as lawmakers deal with what the Department of Homeland Security recently described in a bulletin as a “heightened threat environment” in which domestic extremists may act on “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

Robert McCrie, who teaches security management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, compared the circumstances to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which led to a range of permanent security measures and expenses that have continued for almost 20 years.

“There’s no going back,” he said. “Our institutions have to be protected. They’re symbolic, but more than that, they are centers of government, of our sense of having a stable society. So those funds have to be spent.”

Federal investigators have also devoted considerable time and resources to identifying, finding and prosecuting rioters who breached the Capitol and threatened lawmakers; an officer also died after suffering injuries in the attack, and dozens of others were wounded.

U.S. authorities have opened case files on more than 400 potential suspects and obtained more than 500 grand jury subpoenas and search warrants in the sprawling investigation, acting U.S. attorney Michael R. Sherwin told reporters Jan. 26.

A nationwide manhunt has already resulted in 135 arrests and 150 federal criminally charged cases, according to Sherwin, the top prosecutor in D.C.

More charges could follow.

Law enforcement officials have estimated that roughly 800 people entered the Capitol without authorization, The Post reported last month.

The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment on the costs of the prosecutions and investigations, but some inside the bureau have described the Capitol riot case as their biggest since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Loftis, the Washington State Patrol spokesman, has said he has the full backing of his agency’s leadership to speak out.

“The selfish madness that caused this national self-inflicted wound must be addressed, as it has heaped tragedy on top of tragedy,” he said. “If those of us in law enforcement don’t speak up in defense of democracy and public safety, then our silence becomes a dreadfully powerful statement in its own right.”

7 March 2021

ON TUESDAY, DONALD TRUMP’S LAWYERS filed his final brief in support of his attempt to convince a federal appeals court that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for actions that he took during his term in office, including any criminal actions relating to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. The lies packed into this brief should carry sanctions for the attorneys whose names appear on the front page.

Before digging into the heap of falsehoods, let’s get this out of the way: Trump’s “I-was-a-king” immunity argument is utterly unconvincing. The Constitution says nothing about presidential immunity (unlike immunity for members of Congress), but the Supreme Court has reasonably held that presidents cannot be routinely sued or prosecuted for good-faith decisions made in office, so it has erected a balancing test to protect official presidential acts. In his opening brief filed on December 23, Trump argues there are five categories of protected official activity in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against him:

• his tweets about the outcome of the 2020 election “contending that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities”;

• his communications “with the Acting Attorney General and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice about investigating election crimes and possibly appointing a new Acting Attorney General”;

• his communications “with state officials about the administration of the federal election,” in which he “urged them to exercise their official responsibilities in accordance with extensive information that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities”;

• his communications “with the Vice President, in his legislative capacity as President of the Senate,” and attempts “to communicate with other members of Congress in order to urge them to exercise their official duties with respect to the certification of the federal election according to President Trump’s view of the national interest”; and

• the organization by “other individuals” of “slates of alternate electors from seven States to provide a justification for the Vice President to exercise his official duties in the manner urged by President Trump.”

Translation: Trump’s view of the Constitution and the law was the law, regardless of the truth.

Underlying all those activities is the Big Lie—the set of falsehoods that Trump repeated about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. The Big Lie was the factual foundation for everything that followed. It was the subject of the dozens of lawsuits that Trump filed and lost across the country in November and December 2020. It was because of the Big Lie that people died on January 6th. And it is because of the Big Lie that hundreds of Americans have been sentenced for crimes committed on that day.

But Trump knew that what he calls “fraud and irregularities” in the 2020 election did not exist. The House January 6th Committee spelled this out in detail in its final report, explaining exactly how Trump “was informed over and over again, by his senior appointees, campaign experts and those who had served him for years, that his election fraud allegations were nonsense.”

This is why Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump alleges that the five categories listed above were all part of a criminal scheme to obstruct the congressional counting of Electoral College votes and thwart a lawful election. Thus, the argument circles back to whether actions presidents take in furtherance of a crime against the United States, in theory, are insulated from accountability for presidents.

SO IT IS STUNNING TO SEE that, three years after January 6th, Trump and his lawyers are once again spreading the Big Lie. The brief filed on Tuesday contains the names of seven licensed attorneys from three law firms, including John Lauro and Todd Blanche, who have been publicly outspoken in the criminal cases on Trump’s behalf. Responding to Smith’s brief opposing Trump’s claims, his lawyers brazenly argue:

The government’s brief . . . omits the vigorous disputes and questions about the actual outcome of the 2020 Presidential election—disputes that date back to November 2020, continue to this day in our nation’s political discourse, and are based on extensive information about widespread fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. [Emphasis added.]

The latter bit is patently false, and the lawyers move onto especially thin ice by citing as their source a Truth Social post that Donald Trump coordinated to release the same day their brief was filed. Both the brief and the Truth Social link to an anonymously authored PDF that rehashes many of the falsehoods that have been repeatedly disproved over the last three years.

This is sanctionable misconduct.

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Recall that in August 2021, a federal court in Michigan ordered monetary sanctions against Donald Trump’s “Kraken” lawyers for filing four frivolous lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential campaign. The judge concluded that the lawyers “deceiv[ed] a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated.” Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (not to mention ethical rules binding attorney conduct) states that when attorneys file a paper with a federal court, they are certifying “to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances,” that “the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery.” It is well established that the Big Lie is a lie. The brief violates Rule 11.

Again, these falsehoods have been painstakingly and repeatedly debunked. As far back as December 2020, Attorney General Bill Bar announced that federal authorities uncovered no evidence of fraud that might have affected the outcome of the election. In the states of Ohio, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona, Republican secretaries of states and official audits concluded there was no proof of widespread fraud. Fox News shelled out $787.5 million to Dominion Voting to settle a defamation case arising from the network’s knowingly broadcasting of false information about the 2020 election. The list goes on and on. For lawyers to assert in a filing to the D.C. Circuit—which is considered the second most powerful court in the land, behind the U.S. Supreme Court, because it hears the lion’s share of cases involving the federal government and the Constitution—is appalling.

It’s time for more lawyers—and not just their disturbed client—to be held accountable by the rule of law for continuing this damaging ruse.