[ “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a
winner.”]
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LEAKED AUDIO: BEFORE ELECTION DAY, BANNON SAID TRUMP PLANNED TO
FALSELY CLAIM VICTORY  
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Dan Friedman
July 12, 2022
Mother Jones
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_ “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”
_

, Mother Jones illustration; J. Scott Applewhite/AP; Chip
Somodevilla/Getty

 

On the evening of October 31, 2020, Steve Bannon told a group of
associates that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory
on election night—even if he was losing. Trump knew that the slow
counting of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots meant the returns would
show early leads for him in key states. His “strategy” was to use
this fact to assert that he had won, while claiming that the
inevitable shifts in vote totals toward Joe Biden must be the result
of fraud, Bannon explained.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s
gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,”
Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to audio of the meeting
obtained by _Mother Jones_. “He’s just gonna say he’s a
winner.”

“As it sits here today,” Bannon said later in the conversation,
describing a scenario in which Trump held an early lead in key swing
states, “at 10 or 11 o’clock Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval,
tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.'”

Trump’s plan to falsely declare victory while tens of millions of
votes were still being counted was public knowledge even before the
election. _Axios_ reported
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the scheme at the time. Bannon himself discussed
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idea on November 3—Election Day—on his _War Room_ podcast. Weeks
earlier, Bannon had interviewed a former Trump administration
official who outlined
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Trump would use allegations of fraud to dispute an electoral defeat
and would seek to have Congress declare him the winner. Last month,
the congressional committee investigating January 6 detailed
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Rudy Giuliani convinced Trump to go ahead with a victory declaration
after 2 a.m. on November 4, over the objections of campaign staff.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump insisted in that
infamous news conference [[link removed]].

The nearly hourlong audio obtained by _Mother Jones_ is new evidence
that Trump’s late-night diatribe—which came a few hours later than
Bannon had anticipated—followed a preexisting plan to lie to
Americans about the election results in a bid to hold onto power. The
new recording stands out for the striking candor and detail with which
Bannon described a scheme to use lies to subvert democracy. Bannon
also predicted that Trump’s false declaration of victory would lead
to widespread political violence, along with “crazy” efforts by
Trump to stay in office. Bannon and his associates laughed about
those scenarios at various points in the recording.

In a comment sent Wednesday, a Bannon spokesperson argued that
Bannon’s statements on the recording are not news. “Nothing on the
recording wasn’t already said on War Room or on multiple other shows
like The Circus on Showtime,” the spokesperson said. “Bannon gave
that lecture multiple times from August to November to counter Mark
Elias’ Election Integrity Project.” Elias is a prominent
Democratic election lawyer. The spokesperson also said that the
January 6 committee “should have the courage to have Mr. Bannon come
and testify publicly about these events.”

After Election Day, Bannon became a prominent booster of Trump’s
bogus election fraud claims. The _Washington Post_ reported
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that Bannon’s “vociferous support” for those lies helped
convince Trump to grant him a last-minute pardon on unrelated fraud
charges. Speaking to _Mother Jones,_ Bannon’s attorney, Robert
Costello questioned that reporting. He said that as far as he knew,
“Trump never made any” statement linking the pardon to Bannon’s
election rhetoric.

Bannon refused last year to cooperate with a January 6 committee
subpoena. The Justice Department later charged him
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two counts of contempt of Congress. This weekend, he claimed
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he now wishes to testify before the committee. But federal
prosecutors argued
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about face was “irrelevant” to the charges that Bannon had already
broken the law. A judge ruled
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that the trial would go forward next week.

The pre-election audio comes from a meeting between Bannon and a half
dozen supporters of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul for whom
Bannon has worked. Bannon helped Guo launch a series of pro-Trump
Chinese-language news websites that have promoted an array of
far-right misinformation, including a video streaming site called GTV.
The meeting was intended to help GTV plan its election night coverage.

Though he did not attend, Guo arranged the confab, which was held in
the Washington, DC, townhouse where Bannon tapes _War Room_,
according to a person who was present. That source recorded the
meeting and recently provided the audio to _Mother Jones_. The
attendees included Dr. Li Meng Yan, a virologist who had made
unsubstantiated claims that Covid was designed by China as a
bioweapon—claims that Bannon had helped to propagate
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Also there was Wang Dinggang, a GTV host who had helped
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spread false claims about Hunter Biden.

Speaking to this group of mostly Chinese immigrants, Bannon explained
US electoral processes—and Trump’s plans to exploit them—in some
detail. He emphasized that in 2020, Republicans were more likely to
vote in person, casting ballots that, in many states, would be counted
first. Democrats disproportionately voted by mail. Their ballots would
take days to tally in a number of states. That meant that when it came
to public perceptions about who was winning, Democrats would “have a
natural disadvantage,” Bannon said. “And Trump’s going to take
advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a
winner.”

“So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a
firestorm,” Bannon continued. “You’re going to have antifa,
crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be
sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the
winner. I’m the king.'”

It’s not clear how much influence Bannon, who had previously been
Trump’s top White House strategist before being ousted, really
wielded over Trump at this time. But Bannon has
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he was a key architect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election
results and has reportedly asserted that he convinced
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to make January 6 a moment of reckoning in that bid. Bannon was also
among the Trump associates who gathered in a set of rooms and suites
in the Willard Hotel on January 6 to advise on the president’s
attempt to remain in power.

Bannon’s remarks to Guo’s supporters indicate that he was working
with a group, led by Giuliani, that wanted Trump to take particularly
aggressive steps to contest unfavorable election results. Other
advisers have said
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opposed these steps. Bannon said during the October 31 meeting that he
was collaborating closely with Giuliani, who was preparing to oversee
Trump’s planned legal efforts.

Bannon’s meeting with Guo’s associates occurred a few weeks after
Bannon, working with Giuliani, had provided the contents of Hunter
Biden’s laptop to the _New York Post_. Bannon acknowledged in the
recording that he had also helped supply Guo supporters with this
material. As _Mother Jones_ has reported
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Guo then directed his backers to put sex videos and other salacious
content from the laptop online. Bannon praised Guo’s effort during
the meeting, saying it had helped slow Biden’s momentum. That left
Biden with little prospect of a resounding election night victory that
Trump wouldn’t easily be able to contest, Bannon added.

As a result, any chance for a “peaceful resolution of this is
probably gone,” Bannon said. “Because the other three alternatives
[are], either Biden’s up slightly and Trump says he stole it, right,
and he’s not leaving. Or it’s undefined and we can’t figure out
who’s leading, and Trump’s saying he’s stealing it, and he’s
not leaving. Or, Trump’s leading, which is the one where they’re
gonna burn the city down.”

Bannon expressed the belief that Trump actually winning would lead to
violence by the left. But he also said that Trump falsely claiming
he’d won—a strategy Bannon was cheering on—would probably cause
violence too. And Bannon emphasized that election night would mark the
start of a battle for power in which Trump would try to stop the votes
of people who opposed him from being counted, while Democrats would
try to use invalid ballots to defeat him. Democrats, Bannon claimed,
“steal elections all the time.”

Election Day 2020 would not be like others, Bannon said. “This is a
revolution,” he explained. “This election just triggers more
fighting.” 

Bannon also said during this meeting that once the voting was done,
Trump would be unencumbered by electoral pressure. “Here’s the
thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again,” Bannon
said. “He’s gonna fire [Christopher] Wray, the FBI
director…He’s gonna say ‘Fuck you. How about that?’
Because…he’s done his last election. Oh, he’s going to be off
the chain—he’s gonna be crazy.”

Bannon also said he expected that Trump would quickly fire CIA
Director Gina Haspel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Health and Human
Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“If Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to
be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say,
‘They stole it. I’m directing the attorney general to shut down
all ballot places in all 50 states,'” Bannon said. “He’s not
going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy
shit.”

_Dan Friedman is a reporter in Mother Jones' DC bureau. Reach him
at [email protected]._

* Steve Bannon
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* Donald Trump
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* attempted coup
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* 2020 Presidential Election
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