No, Donald Trump didn't win the 2020 election and isn't the current President of the U.S.

By: Chandan Borgohain
April 18 2023

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Context

On April 4, 2023, a Manhattan criminal court indicted former U.S. President Donald Trump for as many as 34 felonies for falsifying business records. A claim shared by multiple Facebook users said that Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election despite “massive fraud” and is the current legitimate president of the U.S., and therefore cannot be indicted by the court. 

The posts also claim that after the 2020 presidential election, the country was taken over by “a military government headed by Military Secretary General Christopher Miller and Commander-in-Chief, duly elected President Donald” on January 20, 2021. However, these claims are false.

In Fact

On November 3, 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election, winning with 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232 votes. At the time, Trump “refused to concede” the results and threatened to take “legal action on ballot counting.” Following the outcome of the election, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6, to denounce Biden’s victory. Amid such incidents of turmoil and crisis, Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021, and delivered his inaugural address in the presence of Chief Justice John Roberts, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others.

A week before Biden’s oath-taking, the highest-ranking military general in the United States, Mark Milly, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff released an internal memo condemning the violent riot in Washington DC on January 6 and committed their allegiance towards the then newly-elected President. “The military leaders said President-elect Joe Biden would be inaugurated on January 20 and become their commander in chief,” Reuters reported. These show that the claims of the military overthrowing the U.S. government on January 20 and Trump being the Commander in Chief are false. 

Meanwhile, Trump and his supporters continue to claim widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, claims which hold no substantial evidence and have been debunked repeatedly by fact-checking organizations. On November 23, 2020, the BBC fact-checked such claims. Further, according to a report by AP dated December 15, 2021, a search for cases of voter fraud in six states that Trump had challenged revealed fewer than 475 potential instances out of more than 25 million votes cast, a number that would not have affected the election outcome. Moreover, as detailed by a Politico report from June 13, 2022, several of Trump's aides have stated that his fraud claims were untrue.

The viral post also carries a screenshot of a message claiming that 'Arvin Sloane' stated, "The arrest of Donald Trump would prompt the Supreme Court to reveal its ruling that Trump is the president of the United States and therefore cannot be impeached while in office." However, Trump is legally not the President of the U.S., does not have the support of the military, and can certainly be indicted. 

After Trump was formally arrested on April 4 at a New York court, there was no "emergency broadcast by the military that Trump is the president of the United States since the massive 2020 fraud," as claimed in the screenshot. Further, Arvin Sloane is a fictional character from the television show Alias, and there is no evidence of such an authority related to the U.S. government or the Trump case.

The Verdict

Donald Trump lost the 2020 U.S. election to Joe Biden, who is serving as the current U.S. president since he won the election and was sworn in on January 20, 2021. There is no evidence of a secret military takeover in the U.S. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.