U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions during a press conference on June 27, 2025. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, President Donald Trump said prosecutions related to his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him were imminent.
Trump was in the midst of criticizing NATO Wednesday, blaming U.S. allies for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when he digressed into complaining about the “rigged election” in 2020.
“It’s a war that should have never started and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren’t rigged. It was a rigged election,” he said. “Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”
“But it should be,” he added. “It’s a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Fulton County, Georgia last month, demanding officials there turn over 2020 election documents, including ballots. Georgia is where Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find” 11,780 votes, enough to reverse his loss there in 2020, and many of the conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and his allies focused on the count in Fulton County.
Officials there have responded to the lawsuit seeking its immediate dismissal, noting that the law the DOJ cites in demanding the documents, the 1960 Civil Rights Act, only requires local election administrators to hold onto records for 22 months, while the 2020 election was over five years ago.
It’s unclear whether Trump was revealing actual administrative actions coming soon or merely daydreaming aloud before a gathered audience of the world’s political and economic leaders. Trump has often said certain actions were in the works that never materialized, including statements about a new executive order related to elections over the fall.
In October, a prominent Trump ally told conservative podcasters that a federal grand jury had been impaneled in Florida to consider charges against Democratic officials related to investigations into Trump. Mike Davis, a confidant of Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleged that the DOJ was looking to prosecute Democrats for investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged unlawful activities around the 2016 election and again after he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power in 2021.
Trump made similar remarks while speaking to White House reporters Tuesday. “It was a rigged election. Everybody knows that now. And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly,” he said at one point during a lengthy, rambling press conference. “We caught them. We caught them.”
*This story has been updated.
