President Donald Trump has often claimed that incidents of voter fraud aided the Clinton campaign in 2016. Just last Thursday at a rally in New Hampshire, Trump claimed that voter fraud had cost him the state's four electoral points.
"It was taken away from us," he said at a rally in Manchester.
“There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in 2016 or really in any previous election,” Ellen Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, told CNN Monday.
On Monday, a man went on trial in federal court in Sacramento. He'd allegedly voted illegally for decades, lacking citizenship status--he'd immigrated from Mexico.
As it turns out, contrary to Trump's claims that voter fraud occurs with frequency and aids Democrats, the man is a Trump supporter, the Sacramento Bee reports.
"Gustavo Araujo Lerma is an avowed Trump supporter, and evidence expected to be introduced in his trial includes letters of thanks from Trump, former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and current RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel," the Bee writes.
President Trump and Vice President Pence have also expressed their gratitude to the avid Republican.
In a letter sent to Lerma, Trump and Pence say they “are deeply grateful for your resolve to help us make American safer, stronger and more prosperous than ever before.”
The letter was addressed to Hiram Enrique Velez, the name of a deceased American citizen whose identity Lerma allegedly assumed years ago.
"The evidence will show that the defendant was born in Mexico in 1955, married a woman named Maria Manriquez in 1982, and had two children with her in Mexico in the 1980s,” according to a trial brief obtained by the Sacramento Bee. “By the early 1990s, he began living in the United States, fraudulently using the identity of a Puerto Rican-born United States citizen named Hiram Velez.”