In 2012, Barack Obama won reelection by a landslide. He garnered nearly 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney and won the Electoral College 332 to 206. Donald Trump was not pleased.

On election night, Trump called for "a revolution in this country!" Minutes later, he added, "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"

Finally, at 11:30 p.m., after the race was called for Obama, he posted something that feels eerily familiar today: "Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!"

Trump has always been an election denier. He has always vilified voting. He has always started with lies, escalated to the courts, and ultimately embraced violent rhetoric.

For nearly two decades, Trump has been lying about elections and threatening the democratic process. A small group of us has been sounding this alarm, but far too few people in positions of power have been willing to act. The result is that things have only gotten worse.

Big Law has retreated from fighting Trump in court. The legacy media treats election denialism as normal and offers both-sides coverage. Corporate leaders no longer even pretend to care about democracy. The Republican Party is filled with his enablers.

It didn't have to be this way.

After he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in 2016, Trump posted: "Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it." He insisted that "either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified."

During the general election against Hillary Clinton, election lies became a standard feature of his campaign. He claimed the results would be "rigged." Weeks before the election, he was already declaring that "there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day."

His attacks did not stop after he won. Instead, they became more focused on wild claims about the popular vote: "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."

Once Trump was sworn in, his lies grew bolder. According to news reports, he told congressional leaders that he lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million illegal votes had been cast.

In May 2017, Trump created a presidential commission to study election integrity. One of its first tasks was to compile unredacted copies of every state's voter file. When 44 states refused to provide some or all of the requested data, the commission disbanded.

In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, Trump was at it again, warning: "Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday's Election (or Early Voting)." In the aftermath of that election, Trump posted about me for the first time — calling me the Democratic Party's "best election stealing lawyer."

Trump’s election denialism in the period following the 2020 election is well-documented — but it didn’t start there. Many of the same lies he tells today actually originated in the spring and summer the year prior.For example, in early April 2020, he told White House reporters that "mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they're cheaters."

In June, he wrote on social media in all caps: "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!"

By summer, he was telling rally-goers that "the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."

Donald Trump lost that election. It was not rigged. When he tried to change that fact, he lost a staggering number of lawsuits aimed at overturning the results. 

Despite those losses, Trump didn’t stop there. On Jan. 6, 2021, he incited a mob of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Too often, we treat Jan. 6 as an isolated event — the culmination of a failed effort to overturn the 2020 election. Too many see it as the day a new movement of election denialism was born.

The truth is much worse. The number of those who are complicit is far larger than we can comprehend. The failure to stand up against this democratic assault is far graver.

It is easy to look at the cowardice we witness today and think of it as a new phenomenon — born of Trump’s return to power and the impunity with which he now wields it. But that lets far too many people off the hook.

Maya Angelou once said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

Donald Trump showed us who he was on election night 2012, when he called for a revolution because Obama won. He showed us again in 2016, when he spent months propagandizing that the election would be rigged — and then, after winning, claimed millions of illegal votes had cost him the popular vote. He showed us in 2020, when he incited a mob to storm the United States Capitol rather than accept defeat. And he is showing us again today.

If we are honest about it, when it comes to Trump, we have had more than one “first time.” We have had a dozen years of first times.

Despite knowing better, too many of our institutions failed. Members of the Republican Party either chose to ignore his behavior or went right along with it. The legacy media chose to downplay it. Corporate America chose to profit off of it. And now we are all living with the consequences of those cowardly choices.

My record speaks for itself. From the beginning, I listened carefully to who Trump told us he was, and I believed him.

That is why I go to court every single day fighting for the right of every American to cast a ballot and have it counted. It is why I built Democracy Docket. And it is why I am asking you — today, not tomorrow — to believe him too.

The road ahead is long and hard. But together, we will hold power to account and build a new pro-democracy movement. We have no other choice.