“I think I did win the popular vote. There was tremendous cheating in California. There was tremendous cheating in New York and other places.”

— President Trump, in an interview on Fox News, falsely claiming he won the popular vote in 2016.

Amy Walter: “This week I dug into the most recent national poll from Pew Research and compared it with the results of their 2016 validated vote survey (basically, a post-election exit poll that uses official voting records). What you find is that Trump is hitting his 2016 share of the vote among most demographic groups. But, he’s not grown beyond those voters. Instead, it’s Biden who has improved markedly on Clinton’s 2016 performance.”

“Now, the all-important caveat. The voter validated survey is of people who actually voted in 2016, while the July-August survey is of registered voters. In other words, some of the people in the July-August survey may not vote, while everyone in the 2016 survey did. But, it does help give us some perspective on how Trump is performing with key demographic groups compared to how he did with them in 2016.”

The Independent has audio of Donald Trump meeting with Black leaders just days before his inauguration where he boasted of receiving more African-American votes than the two previous GOP presidential candidates — while also benefiting from some Black people not voting at all.

Said Trump: “I got many more votes than Romney, many more votes than McCain… we ended up with 11 per cent… and I’ll tell you, it’s much more if you add — many blacks didn’t go out to vote for Hillary because they liked me — that was almost as good as getting the vote.”

Phillip Bump notes Donald Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager was arrested for battery after grabbing a reporter in 2016.

His second campaign manager went to prison on a variety of federal charges stemming from the Mueller probe.

His third campaign manager was just indicted on federal fraud charges.

Axios: “Bannon’s indictment makes him the sixth person linked to the senior leadership of the 2016 Trump campaign to be hit with federal charges. The others are Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen — all of whom faced indictments under the Mueller investigation.”

The final Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election has some damning details about the day the infamous Access Hollywood tape was released, Politico reports.

The Trump campaign team knew about the tape an hour before its release. Roger Stone then told Jerome Corsi to get Julian Assange at Wikileaks to “drop the Podesta emails immediately.”

WikiLeaks did so about 30 minutes after the tape was published.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released its fifth and final report on Russia’s “aggressive, multifaceted effort” to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

This seems particularly damning:

Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort’s primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort’s office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond.

Axios: “On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to pass sensitive internal polling data and campaign strategy to Kilimnik. The committee was unable to determine why or what Kilimnik did with that information. The committee did, however, obtain ‘some information’ suggesting Kilimnik ‘may have been connected’ to Russia’s hacking and leaking of Democratic emails.”

The bottom line:

Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.

“A powerful Republican central to the president’s 2020 reelection bid was part of a more concerted effort than previously known to remove him from the ballot in 2016,” Business Insider reports.

“The maneuvers of Katie Walsh and, to a lesser degree, her husband, Mike Shields, have been discussed quietly among some of President Trump’s closest advisers for years. They have both served in powerful posts, including in the White House and the Republican National Committee. Some of those advisers have debated whether the two actually want to help the president or whether they simply want to cash in on their access to Trump.”

Washington Post: “A porn star was paid to keep silent about her alleged dalliance years earlier with a presidential candidate, which a judge has agreed was an illegal violation of campaign finance laws.”

“The private emails of Democrats were stolen and published, which prosecutors have said was an illegal intervention into the U.S. political system by foreign operatives.”

“The two crimes were undertaken to help Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. They led to the indictment or conviction of 13 men, including Trump’s personal attorney. But for nearly four years, Trump has bullied, browbeaten and litigated his way out of efforts to pin down whether he had involvement in or knowledge of the illicit actions that were undertaken to help his presidential campaign.”

First Read has the “indisputable” facts on the Russia investigation:

1. Trump and his campaign asked for Russia’s help in the 2016 presidential race.
2. Trump and his campaign got that help — in a contest decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states.
3. Roger Stone lied about his contacts with Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks.
4. The president commuted Stone’s prison sentence, despite White House aides disagreeing with the move.
5. And Stone admitted his objective was protecting Trump.

“Yes, some of the liberal theories about Russia investigation never came to pass (Michael Cohen didn’t travel to Prague; that ‘pee tape’ appears to be fantasy).”

“And, yes, Mueller concluded that his investigation didn’t establish ‘that that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ (Though note he said ‘Russian government’ and not intermediaries like WikiLeaks.)”

“But what did happen was a bigger scandal — involving a foreign adversary — than we can remember for any recent administration or major presidential campaign.”

Alan Abramowitz: “Trump campaigned more times in more states than Hillary Clinton in 2016. However, a regression analysis of the 2016 results does not show rallies having a significant impact on that election’s results.”

“Campaigns may derive indirect benefits from rallies, though, such as voter contacts, press coverage, and donations. But there’s not much evidence to show that the number of rallies in a given state had an impact on the results.”