Trump baselessly claims the FBI and DOJ may be involved in a ploy to 'rig' the election and says the agencies have been 'missing in action' in his legal battles
- President Donald Trump on Sunday said he believed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice may be involved in an effort to steal the election from him.
- There is no evidence to support this, nor is there evidence to support his baseless claims of voter fraud in the election, and the president offered none during the Sunday interview.
- Trump also said the FBI and DOJ were "missing in action," bemoaning that the agencies weren't doing enough to prove his unsubstantiated claims.
President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed in an interview on Fox News that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice may be involved in a conspiracy to steal the election from him, which has no basis in fact.
"This is total fraud, and how the FBI and Department of Justice — I don't know maybe they're involved. But how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable," the president told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo.
"This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud and it continues to be as they hide," Trump said. "And the problem we have, we go to judges and people don't want to get involved."
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, nor is there evidence of an effort to rig the election against the president. Trump, however, has spent weeks attempting to dispute the election results by leveling allegations of such fraud, which he has been unable to substantiate.
President-elect Joe Biden secured 306 electoral college votes, pushing him well over the 270 needed to win the presidency. He also earned more than 80 million votes nationally, compared to Trump's more than 73 million. Both candidates secured more votes than any presidential candidate in history.
Trump also told Bartiromo that he believed the FBI and DOJ were "missing in action" when asked whether they were investigating his claims of fraud in the election, and said he wished he wouldn't have pledged to "stay out" of their work.
"There's no reason really why I have to," he said.
"You would think if you're in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is the biggest thing you could be looking at. Where are they?" he asked. "I've not seen anything.
"They just keep moving along and they go on to the next president," he continued. "People don't understand this, they've been there a long time. Some of them have served a lot of different presidents, and they have their own views."
The president also Sunday said that he had asked his lawyers to file"one big, beautiful lawsuit" encompassing all of his baseless claims of voter fraud, but said he was told by his own lawyers he didn't have the legal standing to make such a suit. Instead, his legal team has filed a number of smaller suits, which don't allege fraud, in a number of states. None of them have yielded success in overturning the election results.
In the Sunday interview — his first TV interview since losing the election — Trump refused to say when he'd give up the legal challenges and accept the election results.