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Fact check: Trump's bogus claim of more votes in Detroit than people

The info in the president's tweets was labeled by Twitter as being disputed.
Image: US-VOTE-MICHIGAN
Residents cast their votes Nov. 3 at Eisenhower Elementary School in Flint, Mich.Seth Herald / AFP - Getty Images file

President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that there were more votes than people in Detroit.

"In Detroit, there are FAR MORE VOTES THAN PEOPLE. Nothing can be done to cure that giant scam. I win Michigan!" Trump tweeted, later alleging that in Michigan, the number of votes was larger than the number of people who voted, although it's not clear what the president was talking about.

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud and NBC News has projected Joe Biden to be the winner of Michigan.

Trump's claim about Detroit is demonstrably false. There are 670,000 people living in Detroit, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent estimate, and the city says that 250,138 ballots were cast there.

Both his tweets about Detroit and Michigan have been flagged by Twitter as misleading.

The state's largest county, Wayne, which includes Detroit, certified its election results unanimously after an initial deadlocked vote along party lines Tuesday. State canvassers plan to meet next week to certify the state's results.

The tweets come amid a broader effort by the president and his allies to discredit the 2020 election results.

On Wednesday, the campaign announced that it would spend $3 million to pay for a partial recount effort in Wisconsin, claiming without evidence that there was widespread voter fraud and illegal election administration.

In Pennsylvania, a federal judge said Wednesday that he was canceling an evidentiary hearing scheduled for Thursday, signaling that he is likely to dismiss the president's case, which brought former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani back in federal court as an attorney Tuesday for the first time in decades.

Broadly, the president and his allies have yet to prove even one case of voter fraud in court. So far, at least 16 suits have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn — half in the last five days.

Michigan judges have particularly found fault in Trump and his allies' evidence in similar suits.

Earlier this month, a Michigan judge declared claims of widespread fraud alleged by a nonprofit to be "mere speculation."

A second judge rejected the Trump campaign's claims as moot and criticized its lawsuit for a lack of evidence; the campaign had presented an affidavit of a poll worker alleging what another poll worker had heard others say, something the court called "hearsay within hearsay" and a Post-it note, which the court said was "vague" and "likewise hearsay."