In response to Ric Grenell, a top Trump surrogate and election denier, admitting his lies about the 2020 results were to help Trump overturn the election, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Even Ric Grenell – an extreme election denier leading the charge on Donald Trump’s anti-democracy conspiracy theories – knew that Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election were nothing more than a brazen attempt to try and overturn the results. Now, after pushing lies and cozying up to dictators, Grenell is openly bragging about his prospects to be a top administration official if Trump gets back into office – once again making it clear that our democracy is on the line in this election.”

Ric Grenell knowingly pushed fraudulent claims and baseless lies to help Donald Trump as he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

New York Times: “Richard Grenell’s quest to be secretary of state in a second Trump administration began late on Election Day in 2020, when the defeated president dispatched loyalists to run shambolic “stop the steal” operations in battleground states.

“President Donald J. Trump tapped Mr. Grenell — his combative former ambassador to Germany, acting national intelligence chief and special envoy to the Balkans — to fly by private plane to Nevada, where Mr. Grenell ensconced himself, his dog Lola, lawyers and a crew of activists in a suite at the Venetian Resort, which served as the group’s war room in Las Vegas. In a days-long spectacle, the Trump team filed a lawsuit and aired false accusations of fraud, including one wrongly implicating hundreds of members of the military.

“It was all a sham. Mr. Grenell told the team in the war room, two G.O.P. operatives recalled, that the Nevada vote was not, in fact, stolen. The operatives, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal from Mr. Grenell, said he told the team that the goal was simply to ‘throw spaghetti at the wall’ — the operatives described Mr. Grenell making a theatrical tossing gesture as he spoke — to distract the media from calling Nevada while the election battle in neighboring Arizona played out.

[…]

“Either way, several people close to the former president say that Mr. Grenell has a good chance of landing a top foreign policy job in a second Trump administration — if not as secretary of state, which requires Senate confirmation, then perhaps as national security adviser, which does not. They note that Mr. Grenell has spent the past three and a half years leveraging his Balkan contacts in business ventures, including with an important partner — Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law — and that he brings a bombastic bravado to American diplomacy held in high regard by the former president.

[…]

“Still, Mr. Trump talks to Mr. Grenell regularly, and a year and a half ago was heaping praise on his pugilistic loyalty. ‘Ric Grenell: a fighter,’ Mr. Trump said in Arizona in October 2022. ‘We have a great, great man. A great fighter. He’s got a lot of future.’”

Grenell has spent years cozying up to right-wing authoritarian leaders and undermining U.S. foreign policy — just like his former boss Trump.

The Guardian: “Richard Grenell’s shadow foreign policy campaign is unsettling diplomats and threatens to collapse US interests”

“Grenell – who served as a rambunctious ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term – has carved a niche as the articulator-in-chief of a Maga approach to global affairs that appears to echo his political master’s voice.

[…]

“In recent months, he has pitched up in Guatemala, where he tried to stymie US state department pleas for a peaceful transition of power by backing rightwing efforts to block the inauguration of the liberal president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo, on supposed electoral fraud grounds about a poll previously declared “free and fair” by international observers.

[…]

“‘There are many aspects to what Grenell is doing,’ said Joe Cirincione, a veteran Washington foreign policy and arms control specialist. ‘One is grift, looking for business deals, particularly in Serbia, where Trump has longstanding business interests and Trump seems to be helping him pursue this.’

“‘Another is more sinister. It looks as though Grenell is trying to build up a developing authoritarian network of rightwing leaders to form this authoritarian axis that Trump might govern by – ranging from Putin to [Viktor] Orbán [prime minister of Hungary] to Erdoğan.’

[…]

“Grenell’s own pronouncements give proponents of America’s existing alliances little cause for comfort.”