Send this page to someone via email

U.S. President Donald Trump repeated the unproven claim that millions of illegal ballots lost him the popular vote in the November election at a White House reception with senators and congressmen Monday, reports say.

Trump claimed that three to five million illegal ballots kept him from capturing the popular vote, at what was his first meeting with congressional leaders of both the Republicans and the Democrats since being sworn in Saturday, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told Politico.

READ MORE: White House denies Donald Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally

A Democratic aide confirmed that Trump said it in an interview with The Associated Press.

It’s a claim that the U.S. president first made on Twitter in late November.

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Story continues below advertisement

There’s no evidence to support Trump’s claims and investigations by media outlets such as The New York Times have found nothing to back it up.

But that didn’t stop the U.S. president from rehashing the claim with lawmakers, two unnamed sources told The Washington Post.

In an interview with the newspaper, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn’t confirm that Trump made the claim outright, but he did say the election process was discussed at the reception.

“We talked about different electoral college, popular votes, going through the different ones.” Tweet This

Trump won the U.S. election with 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232.

Clinton, however, won the popular vote, as 65,844,954 ballots were cast in her name compared to Trump’s 62,979,879.

Story continues below advertisement

WATCH MORE: White House spokesman Josh Earnest spoke to reporters at a daily briefing that there has been no evidence of widespread election fraud in the Nov. 8 election after President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that millions of illegal votes were cast.

0:49 No evidence of U.S. voter fraud: White House No evidence of U.S. voter fraud: White House