Fact check: Trump falsely claims he saved Ron DeSantis from ballot stealing in 2018

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·5 min read
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The claim: Trump stopped a 'steal' in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race

In 2018, Republican Ron DeSantis defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in Florida's gubernatorial race. Former President Donald Trump recently claimed he played a key part in the Republican victory by stopping supposed election fraud.

"I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys," reads a Nov. 10 Truth Social post from Trump, which generated more than 16,000 likes in less than a week.

Trump claims that "the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win" and that he stopped DeSantis' election from being stolen.

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The post was shared widely on Facebook and Instagram, where it generated hundreds of interactions, according to the social media insights tool CrowdTangle.

But Trump's claim is pure fiction, contradicting what happened in 2018 on multiple levels.

Broward County officials told USA TODAY there was no federal law enforcement presence during the 2018 race, and there were no stolen votes either. Multiple investigations and reviews found no sign of fraud in Broward County during the 2018 election.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment. Liz Harrington, Trump's spokesperson, did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

Officials: No federal law enforcement or election fraud present in 2018 race

In order for Trump to have stopped a “steal” in the 2018 gubernatorial race, there would have to have been an effort to steal votes. But there was none, according to Ivan Castro, a spokesperson for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office.

Castro also told USA TODAY the office "has no documentation of any federal law enforcement presence during the 2018 elections.”

Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller agreed, noting that no one at the county’s vote-counting site on election night – or the days when recounts for the race took place – identified themselves as law enforcement officials or U.S. attorneys. And no votes were stolen in the 2018 race, he said.

"The question of Trump's involvement never came up," Geller told USA TODAY. "Both sides, Democrats and Republicans, had official watchers to make sure that the votes were being counted correctly. They were examining every ballot, so, I mean, there was no opportunity for a steal to take place."

Following the 2018 election, there were multiple investigations examining the outcome of the races in Broward County. But none found rampant election fraud.

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Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who ran against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in 2018, said in a statement that he asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate allegations of election fraud in Broward County. The department released a report in 2020 that examined allegations of irregularities in the vote-by-mail process in four counties, including Broward, but found "no evidence of fraudulent intent."

The Tampa Bay Times also reported that "another Scott appointee conducted a post-mortem of the office's handling of the 2018 elections and likewise found no proof of fraud." And a judge dismissed Scott's attempt to “impound" voting machines in Broward County in 2018, saying there was no evidence of any irregularities or voter fraud, according to NBC News.

Broward County did publish an audit report that the November 2018 election "was not efficiently and effectively conducted," noting that there were backlogs in processing mail-in ballots and that half of the precincts reported more votes than voters. However, the report does not cite election fraud or federal involvement in the 2018 race.

And Charles Stewart III, an election security expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told PolitiFact in 2018 that "while there may have been questionable judgments and mistakes" in Broward County, "none of this seems to involve a large number of votes, and none of it appears aimed at shifting the results of the election."

PolitiFact and Factcheck.org also debunked the claim.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Trump stopped a "steal" in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race. Contrary to the former president's claim, there was no sign of federal law enforcement in the 2018 race, nor were there any votes stolen, officials said. Multiple investigations and reviews found no sign of election fraud in Broward County during the 2018 midterms.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Trump's false claim that he stopped a 'steal' in 2018