Trump’s blog crashes ‘after he makes more false claims about Arizona election fraud’

‘From the Desk of Donald J Trump’ site went down on Saturday

Donald Trump’s website crashed for almost an hour this weekend after the former president released a false statement about election fraud in Arizona.

In a blog post, Mr Trump made the wild accusation on Saturday that there had been “DELETION of an entire Database and critical Election files of Maricopa County”.

He also baselessly claimed that “seals were broken on the boxes that hold the votes, ballots are missing, and worse”.

The unfounded allegations apparently led to a surge in visitors to the site, From the Desk of Donald J Trump, and caused it to crash, the Gateway Pundit and Business Insider reported.

Visitors were informed that “something has gone wrong and this URL cannot be processed at this time”, according to a picture of the site which was shared on Twitter.

The election recount in Arizona follows a subpoena from Republican senators for Maricopa County ballots and files from November.

Although President Joe Biden carried the county by 10,000 votes, Arizona's Republican-controlled state senate asked a consultancy firm, Cyber Ninjas, to carry out an audit of two million ballots in a bid to find election fraud.

Mr Trump applauded the audit in his blog post and said that Arizona Republicans were “up in arms” at the alleged “deletion” and “missing” files from the Maricopa County recount.

He also claimed that media outlets and Democrats “want to stay as far away as possible from the Presidential Election Fraud”.

He attacked Fox News for what he viewed as lack of coverage on the Arizona recount.

“Fox News is afraid to cover it—there is rarely a mention. Likewise, Newsmax has been virtually silent on this subject because they are intimidated by threats of lawsuits,” he wrote

“The story is only getting bigger and at some point it will be impossible for the weak and/or corrupt media not to cover,” he continued.

The audit will not change the election results in Maricopa County, nor Arizona more widely. Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and the presidential election results were certified on 30 November.

The Democrat’s margin was even higher in Maricopa County, which Mr Biden won by 45,109 votes against Mr Trump.

On Saturday the top elections official for Maricopa County, Stephen Richer, described the allegations of a deleted database as “unhinged”, in a response on Twitter.

“I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now,” wrote Mr Richer, a Republican. “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country.”

Mr Trump has been forced to set up his own blog site in order to release statements. The former president was permanently banned from Twitter and indefinitely banned from Facebook for false allegations of election fraud, and his role in inciting the US Capitol riot in January.

The site was mocked after being pitched as a new “communications platform”. CNN’s media reporter, Oliver Darcy tweeted: “He finally figured out how to ... post statements ... to his website? Congrats to the former President and his team on discovering the technology to blog!”