Ex-DOJ official testifies Trump pushed conspiracy theory about “Indian people getting paid to vote”

A previous Justice Division formal elevated eyebrows when he testified that Donald Trump complained that Native Us citizens were being compensated to vote against him, but the assert appears to have originated with a White Household staffer.

Richard Donoghue, who served as Trump’s performing deputy attorney general in December 2020 and January 2021, instructed the Property find committee the former president claimed voter fraud had deprived him of re-election, and numerous observers were being surprised by some of the baseless allegations.

“Useless individuals are voting, Indian people are having paid to vote,” Trump claimed, in accordance to Donoghue. “There is plenty of fraud going on right here.”

Donoghue testified that he informed the previous president these allegations were being false, and it appears that Trump heard the claims from Garrett Ziegler, an aide to then-White Property economic adviser Peter Navarro.

“The younger and earnest Garrett Ziegler rides to the sound of the guns in Nevada,” wrote Navarro in his book, “In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Yr.” “He will before long obtain himself criss-crossing an Indian reservation investigating outrageously illegitimate bribes for Biden votes.”

Despite the fact that some election advocates these types of as Nevada Indigenous Vote Challenge did supply cost-free meals, present cards and raffle entries to voters, the giveaways had been available to all voters, and not in exchange for backing any certain candidate.