Jason Miller's public statements on the 2020 election contradict his deposition to the January 6 committee
During the post-election period, Miller repeatedly cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election results
Written by Madeline Peltz
Published
A federal court filing from March 2 alleges that former President Donald Trump may have violated multiple laws in his effort to overturn the 2020 election. The filing also exposes GETTR CEO and former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller’s lies and doublespeak while Trump’s campaign was ongoing and leading up to the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
This is to date the most extensive peek into the findings of the select committee to Investigate the January 6 attack. It includes Miller telling the committee in a deposition that he agreed with then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s assessment that there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, contradicting statements he made publicly on Fox News during that same time period. Miller also recounted that “soon after the election, a campaign data expert told the President ‘in pretty blunt terms’ that he was going to lose.” Excerpts from Miller’s deposition were included as an exhibit in the committee’s filing from Wednesday.
Publicly, Miller was saying the exact opposite, repeatedly appearing on Fox News to cast doubt on the election results, promote bogus claims of fraud, going so far as to say, two days after the election was called for Biden, that “absolutely some of these states could change” the winner in the course of the Trump campaign’s desperate pursuit to overturn the results. He used props to claim he had multiple examples of purported dead voters and referred to a debunked Project Veritas claim about backdated ballots in Michigan.
(Transcript is available here.)
Miller appeared again on The Story with Martha MacCallum on December 8, 2020, the “safe harbor” deadline for states to certify the results of the presidential election. Miller dismissed the deadline's importance and said, “real dates” to pay attention to are January 6 and January 20, which is “the date when we will swear in the next president of the United States, whether that’s President Trump or whether that’s Joe Biden” and said “there is some time here” for Biden’s victory to be taken away from him.
When Martha MacCallum suggested it was too late to change the consent decree in Georgia that Trump had falsely asserted allowed for fraud in the state’s voting process, Miller suggested that “it doesn’t have to be” because of Republican control of the state government, which he suggested could change the rules last minute to restrict absentee voting.
Miller also said, “We’re making sure that we’re getting to the bottom of this. Whether it be Wisconsin, Georgia, also this lawsuit the state of Texas is bringing I think is critical,” referring to the widely condemned effort by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, to overturn the 2020 election at the Supreme Court.
(Transcript is available here.)
On January 4, 2021, Miller appeared on Fox News’ Bill Hemmer Reports to push back on Georgia election official Gabe Sterling’s press conference where he lambasted the Trump campaign’s attempts to undermine the election results and pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to “find” votes to overturn the results.
Miller claimed that Sterling had “glossed over” examples of voter fraud and ballot mishandling in Georgia which he described as “pretty notable,” and expressed concern over “chain of custody for some of these drop boxes.” He also likened Sterling’s press conference to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi mind tricks in Star Wars.
(Transcript is available here.)
After Miller began cooperating with the January 6 panel, he somewhat changed his tune publicly. During his recent tour of the far-right fever swamps, Miller said on a podcast from December 27, 2021, “I do think that there was significant fraud and irregularities on Election Day, but I have not seen enough on -- specific to Election Day to overturn the election.”