Fact check: Trump lies that Senate Democrats stole the 2020 election, baselessly accuses NBC's owner of treason

Former President Donald Trump made a series of inflammatory social media posts on Sunday in which, among other things, he lied that Senate Democrats rigged the 2020 election and baselessly accused the company that owns NBC and MSNBC of treason.

Since November 2020, when Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, he has lied dozens of times that the free and fair election was "rigged" and "stolen." In a post on Sunday, Trump added an additional false claim on top of the usual false claim - this time declaring that Senate Democrats perpetrated the (nonexistent) election theft.

Trump was addressing last week's federal indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, on corruption charges Menendez denies. Trump asked why the FBI doesn't raid the homes of "Senate Democrat's" like it searched his Florida home last year for classified documents he had retained after his presidency - baselessly calling that court-approved search illegal. Then he added that "Menendez is a 'piker' compared to some of those Election Stealing THUGS."

Later in the post, after making baseless allegations about Biden, Trump returned to the topic of Senate Democrats: "I wonder how much they got paid for Rigging the Election? Menendez is one of many, a small timer at that. EVERY DEMOCRAT SHOULD RESIGN FROM THE SENATE!"

Facts First: The 2020 election wasn't rigged or stolen - and Senate Democrats could not possibly have rigged or stolen it. First, the Senate was controlled by Republicans at the time of the election and the subsequent counting of the electoral votes. Second, the Senate had a minimal role in the election.

Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to a Monday request to explain what he was talking about.

Trump has repeatedly complained about various voting policies that states put in place for the pandemic-era election, such as rules making it easier to vote by mail, but those policies were set by the states themselves, not the Trump-era federal government - much less by Senate Democrats in particular. And while Trump had urged members of Congress to reject Biden electoral votes during the count in early 2021, there was no valid reason for the members to do so.