Despite winning Texas in 2020, Donald Trump demands Gov. Abbott prioritize election audit

Even though he won Texas during the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump has asked Gov. Greg Abbott to put a bill on the agenda for the current special legislative session that would green light an audit of the results.

In an open letter published Thursday, Trump doubled down on the big lie that his defeat by President Joe Biden was rigged. He demanded that Abbott, a Republican and ally, act quickly because paper ballots are only kept for a finite time.

“Let’s get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!” Trump wrote.

Nine months following his resounding 2020 defeat, Trump continues to traffic in widely discredited claims that the results were riddled by fraud. His Texas request echoes recount demands he made in Arizona, Georgia and other states. However, it appears to be among the first made in a state he won.

Abbott, who sets the priorities for special sessions of the Texas Legislature, didn't respond to the Current's request for comment.

Like other Republican-controlled statehouses, the Texas Legislature seized on Trump's debunked election fraud claims this summer to justify the passage of a law further restricting the state's voting rules, already among the most stringent in the U.S.

The new law been widely decried by civil-rights groups as a racist attempt to make it harder for people of color and other groups to vote. However, in his letter, Trump dismissed the measure as “watered-down” and demanded a full audit of the state's election results.

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