Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/399



U.S. Attorney General William Barr knew there would be trouble before all the votes had been counted. "So, right out of the box on election night, the President claimed that there was major fraud underway," Barr explained. "I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence." President Trump was quick to claim, "there was major fraud" based solely on the phenomenon known as the "Red Mirage.

As explained elsewhere in this report, Democrats were more inclined to vote via mail-in ballot during the 2020 Presidential election than Republicans, who were more likely to vote in-person on election day. This was widely known, and partly a result of, President Trump's own public statements criticizing mail-in balloting. It also created a gap in the timing of how votes were tallied. The early vote tally favored Republicans on election night because the mail-in ballots, which skewed toward Democrats, were not yet fully counted. This occurred not just in 2020, but also in previous elections. The President knew of this phenomenon but exploited it on election night, nonetheless, as he and his allies had planned to do.

President Trump exploited this timing gap and used it as "the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud," Barr said. But the Attorney General "didn't think much of that." People "had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night," Barr explained. Cities with Democratic majorities in the battleground States wouldn't have their votes fully counted until "the end of the cycle," with "a lot of Democratic votes coming in at the end." This was not some well-guarded secret, as "everyone understood