Politics
Haunted by legacy of police misconduct, Oakland grapples for answers to street crime surge
Along gracious, leafy College Avenue, you can luxuriate with a traditional Thai massage, slip into an artisanal cocktail at an Italian spot or claim a grain-free treat for your canine companion at a charming Mediterranean cafe.
Privileged Rockridge hardly seems the sort of neighborhood that would generate grist for the crime blotter. But that changed last year, when one of Oakland’s more upscale enclaves suffered a string of retail break-ins and armed robberies and, most spectacularly, a series of full-frontal assaults on a neighborhood liquor store.
David Shrestha has shored up defenses outside his Oakland liquor store after a series of burglaries in which thieves rammed through its glass front doors.
(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)
Eddie’s Drive In Liquors, sadly, came to embody its name when thieves plowed a truck through its glass front doors — on four separate occasions in just four months — plundering tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of cigarettes, cognac and other high-end liquor.
In the decade leading up to the pandemic, Oakland was making national headlines because so much was going right: Rockridge and other North Oakland neighborhoods had a high-energy nightlife that offered a chic, soulful alternative to San Francisco. Downtown bustled with people and commerce, and housing was affordable by Bay Area standards.
The city’s distressed east and west ends remained more dangerous terrain, particularly at night, but violent crime rates were nowhere near the highs of the 1980s and ’90s.
That all changed last year, when Oakland found itself in a far harsher spotlight. Crime surged across multiple categories in 2023, including armed assaults and brazen property crimes like the Eddie’s smash-throughs.
In-N-Out Burger and Denny’s were among the high-profile chains to announce they were closing outlets in the city, citing the risks to employees and customers. Kaiser Permanente, a major employer, sent a memo to its downtown workers urging them to stay inside for lunch due to rising daytime street robberies.
In-N-Out plans to close down a location for the first time this month, citing concerns for the safety of customers and employees at its lone Oakland site.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
The first two months of 2024 have brought some relief. Crime rates have fallen in several categories, including homicide, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. But robberies continue to climb upward, and there is a shared sense in large swaths of Oakland that something has changed. The crimes feel more routine and more brazen. And the crime scenes have shifted into wealthier areas.
Oaklanders and their city leaders agree on the need for a better path forward. But because no one can say definitively what went wrong in 2023, there is heartfelt disagreement over how to fix the problem.
City leaders, haunted by a legacy of police scandals, are hesitant to embrace heightened enforcement as the primary remedy. But addressing what they see as the roots of the problem — pandemic job losses and the stubbornly high rates of poverty and homelessness in some neighborhoods — takes time and sustained attention.
“Everything moves so fast here in Oakland. I feel we need to slow things down and take the time to really repair things,” said Viviana Montano, who works with young people at the social services nonprofit Homies Empowerment. “It will take the whole barrio to uplift our community, to unite as one, to fix our community, to save our city.”
Oakland Police Officer J. Yuen patrols an In-N-Out Burger location in Oakland set to close because of crime concerns.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
The harshest critics describe Oakland as a “ghost town” of failing businesses and rampant crime. Recall campaigns have been launched against Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County Dist. Atty. Pamela Price, both in their first terms in office. John Bigs, who initiated an online petition opposing Thao, blamed the recent crime wave on a lack of funding for police and a delay in filling the empty office of police chief. The introduction to his petition describes a “sense of fear and insecurity that now permeates our neighborhoods.”
Others in the city say it’s too soon to throw out relatively new leaders. They appeal for more time to show how expanding access to housing, jobs and social programs can enhance public safety.
David Muhammad, executive director of the Oakland-based National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, rejects the bleakest depictions of the city where he grew up. He sees many neighborhoods still bustling. Yet his car has been broken into three times in two years, and he acknowledges he is “much more vigilant than [he] ever was before.”
Muhammad meets monthly for a dinner with community leaders from a range of professions, whose first instinct is not to blame crime on the reforms that aimed to reduce incarceration rates for certain offenses — such as Proposition 47, the 2014 measure that changed certain lower-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and invested in drug and mental health treatment.
“Still, the group is wondering, ‘What is going on?’“ he said. “Certainly, there is something that needs to improve. We love Oakland and want to see it thrive.”
Many activists trace the crime wave to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Along with job losses, the enduring shift to remote work has emptied out downtown streets. The prolonged closure of schools created another problem, pushing teenagers out of classrooms and into the community, often without positive alternatives.
Crucially, the pandemic also saw a key anti-violence program, Ceasefire, begin to unwind after it was credited by city officials for a 43% reduction in homicides from 2012 to 2017.
The program operates on the principle that a relatively small number of people, between 250 and 400, are most likely to be the perpetrators — and the victims — of violence. Ceasefire pairs people in this target population with life coaches, and also offers them therapy, drug rehabilitation, job training and other services.
Oakland’s homicides dropped to 75 in 2018 — its second-lowest total in more than half a century. One of the nonprofits that helped run Ceasefire estimated that 140 lives were saved over five years.
But in-person visits with the program’s participants stopped during the pandemic. Ceasefire withered. By 2021, reported homicides had spiked to 134, followed by more than 120 each of the next two years.
Mayor Thao declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that her top priority is “promoting a safer and more prosperous Oakland.” She called restoration of the Ceasefire program a crucial strategy in bringing down crime.
Bruce Vuong says he was threatened outside his Oakland auto shop with a shotgun pressed to his head.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Late last year, Thao named Holly Joshi, a former Oakland Police Department official and nonprofit executive, as chief of the city’s Department of Violence Prevention. Joshi agreed that intervening with people identified as most at risk for and of violence will be key to cutting crime.
“The message to them is, ‘You’re on the police’s radar, our street-level intelligence says you are on your enemy’s radar … and, at this moment, you are at high risk of going to prison or being killed,’“ Joshi said. She added that they are then told: “We love you. We believe in you. There are other options.”
The question of how much faith, and money, to put in the Police Department remains contentious. As a city councilwoman, Thao supported some efforts to rein in police spending, including reducing the number of police academy classes, but she has reversed course. As mayor, her office has touted that she is “investing in a robust Police Department.”
The department had 711 sworn officers in January, up from the 693 when she took office a year earlier, her staff reported. That’s still below the 749 officers it had in 2019.
Thao’s office also said it is working to shift some duties previously handled by police to nonuniformed city workers — for example, directing thousands of mental-health-related calls that are not emergencies to EMTs and community intervention specialists. The city recently announced it would use a state grant to hire at least six more safety “ambassadors” for Chinatown and downtown to respond to less-threatening situations.
Vehicle break-ins are pervasive across Oakland — and some thieves are now attempting the smash-and-grabs while cars are occupied.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Still, the traditional response of adding more police is a hard sell in this city. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal supervision for more than 20 years, stemming from a scandal in which four officers known as “the Riders” were accused of assaulting and framing West Oakland residents, most of them Black.
Scandals — along with a rotating roster of police chiefs — continued through last year, when Thao fired then-Chief LeRonne Armstrong after an outside investigation found problems in the department’s handling of two officer misconduct cases. An independent arbitrator later sided with the chief, saying in a nonbinding ruling that his firing should be reversed.
“We have a history we can look back on of relying on apprehension and punishment,” said Councilwoman Carroll Fife, a progressive who represents downtown. “That hasn’t worked. Data show that communities with more access to services have less crime.”
The Rev. Harry Williams, a street minister who works with young people, echoed those sentiments.
“Adding more police without more mental health, more school programs, more jobs is like putting a top on a boiling pot,” he said. “Eventually it’s going to boil over.”
The Rev. Harry Williams is among the longtime Oaklanders who believe the city’s crime problem calls for more investment in schools and social programs. Otherwise, he says, “adding more police … is like putting a top on a boiling pot.”
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Many retailers, particularly small-business owners, find themselves torn. They are committed to Oakland, they say, but are worn down by a sense of lawlessness. A growing chorus is pressing for a stronger police presence, wanting to see criminals held accountable.
“There are a lot of jobs out there. Everybody is hiring. There are classes out there. So get a job. Get an education,” said Brenda Grisham, who owns tax preparation and beauty supply businesses and helped organize the recall effort against Price. “We have to stop making excuses for people who do not excel.”
Perhaps no crime has become as universally endured in Oakland as “bipping.” That’s the street term for the practice of breaking car windows, usually followed by stealing whatever is inside. In an alarming twist, some thieves are committing the smash-and-grabs while drivers are still at the wheel.
Car burglary reports in 2023 came in at the rate of more than 37 a day — a one-third increase over the daily average from the most recent five years. In the first eight weeks of this year, the rate had fallen to less than half of that. City leaders struggle to explain either trend.
Adding to a sense of unease is a policy that means suspects often get away, even when they are spotted at the crime scene.
Since 2014, Oakland has barred officers from pursuing suspects who are not armed with a gun or involved in a forcible or violent crime. The policy says that “protection of human life shall be the primary consideration” in deciding whether to pursue a suspect.
Late last month, video cameras caught robbers making off with $100,000 worth of jade collectibles from a store on upscale Piedmont Avenue. Responding officers spotted four suspects jumping into a car, but did not follow.
Though “scared and sad,” the store owners pledged to persevere.
Calling conditions in the city “alarming and unacceptable,” Gov. Gavin Newsom in February ordered a “surge” of 120 California Highway Patrol officers into Oakland, a deployment that was repeated this month. Officials said the temporary escalations led to the recovery of 360 stolen vehicles and the arrest of 168 people.
More CHP reinforcements will come as needed, the governor’s office said. And Caltrans plans to install cameras at more locations along highways and to clean up homeless encampments deemed a risk to public safety.
Some businesses in Oakland have installed tall chain-link fencing around employee parking areas to prevent break-ins of workers’ cars.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Thao called the state support “a game-changer in helping us hold more criminals accountable.” But some saw the CHP deployments as a media stunt by a governor positioning himself to look tough on crime as he contemplates a run for national office.
“You’re not going to solve decades of oppression and systemic inequality with four days of over-policing,” said Robert Symens-Bucher, a lifelong Oakland resident who works for a nonprofit that mentors young men. “Those resources could be put into programs that would serve the community and actually help people in a sustained way.”
Back at Eddie’s Liquors, owner David Shrestha said he still considers Rockridge a “great neighborhood.” He described how neighbors rallied around the store, showing support by making extra purchases after the last incursion in January.
Shrestha has installed a line of concrete posts along the front of Eddie’s, making another vehicle drive-through less likely. Asked whether the crime spree might drive him out, he said he couldn’t just ignore his deep investment in the store.
“It has been 14 to 18 hours a day that we have been here,” he said. “We have done so much. We can’t just walk away.”
President Trump, a former real estate mogul who knows a few things about construction projects, says there is “no harder zoning thing to get” than a helipad. But he is building one at the White House, and building it fast.
Such projects usually require a developer to navigate a complex web of zoning laws, airspace regulations and environmental impact studies, while negotiating with town councils and fighting off community pushback. Construction at the White House can often face additional hurdles.
But Mr. Trump has encountered no such difficulties as he quickly proceeds with construction of a black granite helipad on the South Lawn. He has not asked Congress or any review panel, such as the Commission of Fine Arts, to approve the project.
Past presidents have involved Congress and review panels in changes to the White House grounds, though Mr. Trump has asserted that he has the right to undertake major construction projects, such as a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom, without congressional approval. That project is currently the subject of litigation.
A White House spokesman said in an email that “operational upgrades to the White House grounds, such as the helipad installation, do not require commission reviews.”
Work on the helipad — which will be 100 feet in diameter and feature a presidential seal — started last month, shortly after a makeshift stadium built to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight significantly damaged the South Lawn.
Dana White, the U.F.C. president, said that his organization had set aside $700,000 to repair the lawn after the June 14 event. But Mr. Trump instead decided to forge ahead immediately with a helipad he had long wanted.
Why Trump is building a helipad
The helipad would allow Mr. Trump to use the latest generation of Sikorsky helicopters as Marine One on White House grounds — a move multiple administrations had avoided because the new, more powerful helicopters were likely to damage the South Lawn during landing.
The Navy began the search in 2010 for helicopters to replace the two models that have been used to transport the president and vice president for more than four decades — the VH-3D and the VH-60N. It purchased 23 VH-92A helicopters, including two test aircraft, at about $215 million apiece, with a total cost estimated at $5 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The new helicopters are produced by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, which is building the helipad as a donation. They joined the fleet between 2014 and 2021 and underwent a period of testing. The new generation of helicopters has occasionally been known to scorch the grass with engine exhaust while landing — an issue found during a training session in September 2018.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was the first president to fly on a VH-92A, on his way to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 2024. But no new helicopter has yet transported a president to and from the South Lawn.
Marine One landed on the South Lawn grass for decades, and portable aluminum pads were rolled out to catch the wheels.
Mr. Trump said the new helicopters were “more powerful than the old ones. And when you land on the grass, it’s not that the grass gets discolored, it gets ripped out.”
The VH-92A has two engines with more than three times the capacity of those of the VH-3D, the current Marine One model, pushing more heat to the ground.
Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor, is paying for the helipad project, which Mr. Trump estimated would cost between $5 million and $6 million.
“They didn’t tell us how powerful these helicopters were, and they felt a little bit guilty,” Mr. Trump said.
According to a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, the company has a “long history of supporting projects in both the Washington, D.C., area and across the country. This specific contribution was made to the National Park Service. Our engagement with the federal government is guided by rigorous ethics and compliance standards and conducted in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
More red tape for a Mar-a-Lago helipad
Mr. Trump is also trying to build a helipad at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. But that project is moving much more slowly than the one at the White House.
The Mar-a-Lago project has been the subject of local historic preservation commission review, multiple public hearings, negotiations with town lawyers and votes by the Town Council.
Because Mar-a-Lago is a historic property, any changes there must be approved by the Palm Beach Landmarks Preservation Commission, said Joanne O’Connor, the town attorney for Palm Beach.
Mr. Trump had installed a helipad at the resort during his first administration, but it was dismantled after he left office.
The town is allowing Mr. Trump to build a new helipad at Mar-a-Lago but has placed limits on its use after his presidency. Any helicopter trips to or from Mar-a-Lago after he leaves office can be carried out only if approved by the Secret Service and in the event of an emergency, Ms. O’Connor said. The helipad cannot be used, for instance, to facilitate a golf outing.
“The concern was balancing the health, safety and welfare of the president with the interests of the town residents and the quiet enjoyment of their residential property,” Ms. O’Connor said.
No such review is taking place for the changes Mr. Trump is making at the White House.
Mr. Trump spoke recently about the difficulty most people encounter when trying to have helipads approved at their properties.
“I always was lucky, I always got helipads,” he said in remarks from the Oval Office. “Other people don’t. Very hard to get. The hardest thing to get is a helipad, OK?”
The South Lawn’s future
The helipad would significantly reshape the South Lawn, which has historically hosted events and ceremonies, including the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.
A White House official said events on the South Lawn would not be affected by the new helipad and would continue as usual.
“It can be used for other things when helicopters aren’t landing,” Mr. Trump said this month. “You can have other things out there like events. You could have news conferences literally on it because it’s the right size. So by doing this, we solved the problem, and we’ll be able to finally retire 45-year-old helicopters.”
Previous administrations have prioritized preservation of the White House property over permanent changes to the South Lawn. During the Biden administration, building a helipad was not high on the president’s priority list, said Andrew Bates, who served as a White House spokesman.
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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche came out swinging against Sen. Adam Schiff on Wednesday, denying allegations of self-dealing and intentional refusal-to-recuse in President Donald Trump’s cases, while accusing the California Democrat of lying.
Schiff sparred with Blanche over several legal matters he said prove the nominee is unfit for the job of America’s top law enforcement officer, citing what he described as serious conflicts of interest. Blanche denied the allegations while telling Schiff he was misstating ethics rules and botching key timelines.
Schiff pressed Blanche on whether he met with Justice Department ethics lawyers about his prior representation of Trump in the Stormy Daniels, Mar-a-Lago classified documents, and Jan. 6 cases.
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Sen. Adam Schiff, left, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. (Al Drago/Getty Images; Eric Lee/Getty Images)
Blanche affirmed and said he has recused himself from future litigation or Justice Department business involving any of those suits. But Schiff countered that Blanche reportedly told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that there was no conflict of interest in the Justice Department firing prosecutors linked to Jan. 6 or other cases.
Blanche soon fired back when Schiff criticized him for moving to vacate Jan. 6-related convictions for 12 members of far-right groups.
“I was the acting attorney general – so yes, my department moved to dismiss,” he said, adding that there was no reason for him to recuse himself when Schiff pressed him further.
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“From the Proud Boys matter?” Blanche responded with a puzzled look.
“You’re a lawyer, you know the rules,” Blanche told the Massachusetts-born graduate of Harvard Law.
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“There are rules that say when I have to recuse and that’s not one of them,” Blanche said.
“There are rules,” Schiff agreed. “And when you’re told to recuse yourself from investigations that you handle for the president…” – “I always do,” Blanche cut in – “you’re supposed to recuse yourself,” Schiff finished.
Schiff noted that the second volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump has not been released and said the Justice Department has opposed making it available.
Blanche denied having anything to do with the decision and pointed out it is not the Justice Department, but a federal judge in Miami, that has prohibited its release.
“If you went into court asking them to release it, it would be released by now,” Schiff argued.
Blanche shot back: “What you’re saying happens not to be true – I did not do that.”
“You can’t accuse me of violating my ethical rules and then lie about what I did,” he continued,
Schiff asked Blanche at length what allegedly evolved in his professional life that led him to be under such criticisms.
“What I don’t understand, Todd Blanche, is what happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for,” he said.
“What happened to the prosecutor who said that there wouldn’t be a whiff of political partisanship and then prosecutes the president’s enemies over seashells cases, over making a video stating the plain law in the Constitution?” Schiff said – appearing to reference investigations into former FBI Director Jim Comey’s “8647” post that critics said amounted to a threat on Trump’s life.
“I think Robert Caro had it right when he said that power doesn’t corrupt as much as it reveals. I suspect it has just revealed who you are and who you are as someone willing to sacrifice everything you once believed in for that title, for that position of attorney general,” Schiff claimed.
“I am still here. I am the same exact person I was when I was a federal prosecutor in the SDNY,” Blanche replied.
The exchange led to further criticism of Schiff, including from the Trump-appointed prosecutor in his home region:
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“Facts are not Senator Schiff’s strong suit,” claimed First Assistant U.S. Attorney for Central California Bill Essayli.
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Former Alabama federal prosecutor Jay Town called the exchange “excellent.”
“What [Blanche] is essentially saying is that the Justice Department has gone back to the fundamentals of increasing prosecutions and lowering crime nationwide, unlike the Garland DOJ targeting parents, Catholics, etc.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Schiff for comment.
WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared poised to question the security of U.S. elections with a planned prime-time speech Thursday night, eliciting fears from Democrats and voting rights advocates that he is planning yet another play for federal control over voting in November’s midterms.
The exact reason for the speech has not been disclosed by the White House, with Trump only characterizing it to reporters this week as “really, really big news.” He confirmed it would have to do with “free and fair elections.”
The Washington Post reported, citing sources, that Trump planned to argue that there are vulnerabilities in the nation’s election infrastructure and claim that China had accessed U.S. voter data. The White House declined to confirm any such details Wednesday.
The announcement of the speech set off concerns among the president’s political opponents, as well as elections experts and voting rights advocates, that Trump could again escalate claims that the nation’s voting system is vulnerable to domestic fraud and foreign attacks.
He has previously said that Republicans should “nationalize” election administration, a job that falls to the states under the Constitution, and has pressured his party to tighten federal voting rules.
“We don’t know anything about what he might say … or what he might try to do with his very limited powers, as the president, over elections,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “I expect we’re going to hear a lot of rehashed and debunked claims.”
The president could potentially use new claims to argue that the nation is facing an emergency in upcoming elections that necessitates further federal intervention into voting, Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of elections, said in an interview with The Times.
“This is going to be the rationale for declaring a national emergency,” Morelle said. “It’s transparent that he is creating the emergency and he’s creating the evidence out of whole cloth to suggest there is an emergency.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections, told The Times on Wednesday that Trump was using a known playbook to “[sow] doubt about the outcome before a single vote has been cast.”
“All signs show that tomorrow’s speech will be more of the same: debunked conspiracy theories offered up not because they’re true, but because chaos and doubt are the only cards he has left to play,” Padilla said.
The speech, which Trump announced on social media Monday, comes four months ahead of midterm elections that will determine whether his party retains legislative control in Washington.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed news reports about what Trump might say in the 6 p.m. PDT speech as speculation, and said “nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say.”
The address also comes as Trump’s ceasefire with Iran has fallen apart, renewing expectations for increased gas prices, and his approval rating on the economy has steadily dropped. On Tuesday, it also became public that Trump had paid $5.6 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll, as ordered by a jury that in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger,” Trump told reporters who asked Tuesday about the speech. “Because without free and fair elections you don’t have a country.”
Trump has spread baseless claims of widespread election fraud for years. But his prioritization of his claims about the voting system — even as much of the nation’s attention is on cost-of-living issues — has been on particularly clear display in recent days.
He has aggressively lobbied reluctant Republican senators to pass his voter ID legislation, refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill over it; he fired all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission; and his Justice Department said it would send election monitors to six states.
Since the midterm primaries began, Trump has also sown doubt about election security — chiefly in California, where he suggested Democrats had cheated or attempted to in the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral primaries.
Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose state was often at the center of Trump’s 2020 fraud claims, said the president’s speech posed a threat to voting rights.
“I expect him to use whatever he puts out there on Thursday as a pretext, either for some attempted unconstitutional use of federal power to interfere in the election,” Ossoff said Tuesday on MS Now, “or to give his proxies and loyalists in state and local jurisdictions some cover for whatever they might attempt, or to lay the groundwork for challenging the result.”
Any effort to federalize or take over elections would face serious legal obstacles, said Nahal Kazemi, a Chapman University law professor. Although Congress can pass laws regarding election administration, as it did with the Voting Rights Act, the executive branch doesn’t play a role in running elections.
“You run into essentially a brick wall that is the Constitution, which makes very plain that states run elections,” Kazemi said.
When it comes to concerns about foreign interference, experts say there is little evidence of other countries attempting to hack systems or change votes. Instead, foreign actors have largely operated via disinformation campaigns, as the U.S. determined had occurred in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
“Of the information that is available to us now, there’s no reason to be alarmed about the possibility that a foreign adversary is going to take over election systems,” said Kazemi, who has studied foreign election interference.
One of the things that helps make American elections generally secure, she said, is that they are not centralized but are run by thousands of counties. Hacking into so many voting systems would be extraordinarily difficult for a foreign adversary, she said.
Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, said California “takes elections security extremely seriously” and has one of the most secure systems in the country, subject to strict voter verification measures and intense chain of custody and auditing procedures.
Democrats have worked with elections experts in recent months on attempts to assure the public that U.S. elections are safe and secure. They have also tried to counter claims by Trump that mail ballots and voting machines are unreliable.
A slew of 2020 election reviews, including by Trump’s first administration, concluded that Trump lost and Biden won. Election experts say there is no evidence that widespread fraud determined the outcome of the election.
A judge also found that claims pushed by Trump and his attorneys that the company Dominion Voting Systems manipulated votes cast through its machines in favor of Biden were untrue.
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