Trump claims his supporters won't vote in the 2022 and 2024 elections unless the GOP backs his groundless election-fraud theories

• Trump continues to claim without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
• Trump claimed his supporters would sit out elections if the GOP didn't back his fraud claims.

Former President Donald Trump claimed his supporters would sit out future elections if the Republican Party did not address his baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.

"If we don't solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in '22 or '24," Trump said in a statement emailed to his supporters on Wednesday.

"It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do," he added.

Since leaving office in January, Trump has continued to claim that last year's presidential election was rigged in Joe Biden's favor through widespread voter fraud.

No evidence has emerged to support his claims. Election officials called last year's election "the most secure in American history." Federal judges dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump and his campaign in their efforts to overturn the election.

Multiple partisan election audits in GOP-led states, including one in Arizona of more than 2 million ballots, have also failed to uncover any evidence of voter fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump has floated the prospect of running for president again in 2024. He, along with other senior Republican figures, has expressed confidence that the GOP can retake control of Congress in the 2022 midterms.

Trump's insistence on the GOP's prioritizing his voter-fraud theories also exposes divisions in the party about how to approach the midterm elections.

Two GOP officials this week urged Republican voters to support Democratic candidates in next year's elections, arguing that Trump's continued "conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections" had resulted in a takeover of the party by "pro-Trump extremists."

Republican strategists have also suggested that Trump's claims of voter fraud dampened GOP voter turnout in the Georgia Senate runoff elections that Republicans lost this January, NPR reported.