WASHINGTON—Promoting yet another lie, the chief spokesman for U.S. President Donald Trump said Trump believes millions of illegal immigrants voted illegally in the presidential election.

This did not happen.

There were fewer than a dozen claims of voter fraud across the country. In a December legal filing arguing against a recount in Michigan, Trump’s own lawyers wrote, “All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud.”

Trump, though, is sensitive about the fact that Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton received more votes than him. He wrote on Twitter in November that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” and he repeated the nonsensical claim in a private meeting with congressional leaders on Monday.

Asked Tuesday if Trump indeed believes what he is saying, press secretary Sean Spicer said yes — “based on studies and evidence that have been presented to him,” though there is no evidence at all.

“I think the president has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has,” Spicer said from a podium at the White House.

Trump has regularly promoted conspiracy theories and false claims to suit his political purposes. Spicer’s briefing was his third appearance in the White House press room; at his first, on Saturday, he made five separate false claims about the size of the crowd at Trump’s Friday inauguration.

This lie was far more dangerous, a deception that threatens to damage public faith in the integrity of the electoral system. And voting rights advocates have expressed concern that such deceit will be used to justify an attempt by incoming attorney general Jeff Sessions and Republican state legislators to make it more difficult for people, especially minority groups, to cast ballots.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Trump was undermining both “faith in our democracy” and his own “ability to govern this country.”

“It’s not coming from a candidate for the office, it’s coming from the man who holds the office. So I am begging the president, share with us the information you have about this or please stop saying it. As a matter of fact, I’d like you to do more than stop saying it: I’d like you to come forward and say, ‘Having looked at it, I am confident the election was fair and accurate, and people who voted voted legally,’” Graham told reporters.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer told USA Today that he is concerned about Trump’s penchant for subscribing to incorrect information.

“In general you cannot run a country unless you know the facts,” he said. “If you’re going to believe your own facts, whether it’s about what Putin is doing in the world or what jobs or companies are doing here, you aren’t going to be able to govern, so I worry about it.”

In a dizzying contradiction, Spicer said Trump believes an election involving millions of supposed fraudulent votes was fair. He would not commit to an investigation into a supposed fraud of historic proportions, saying Trump was “comfortable” with the outcome.

Spicer, tellingly, would not say if he personally believes what Trump is saying.

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The Washington Post and other outlets reported that Trump claimed at this Monday meeting that he would have won the popular vote if not for three to five million illegal immigrants he falsely claimed came to the polls. Despite Trump’s victory under the state-by-state Electoral College system that governs presidential elections, Clinton earned nearly three million more votes than he did.

Trump is not new to false claims about voter fraud, which he has always implicitly suggested is being committed by minorities who lean Democratic. Before the vote in November, Trump repeatedly claimed that there was major voter fraud in big cities with large black populations, such as Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis, though this was not true either.

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