2016 election investigation

After Trump's stunning upset over Hillary Clinton in 2016, pundits, analysts, and ordinary Americans all were bewildered as to how the polls could have screwed up so badly. Most apoplectic Democrats believed that Russian hackers cleverly rigged the election for Trump, and that Hillary Clinton was the true victor. Although there was plenty of proof that Trump colluded with the Russians that fateful night, no one would ever know the truth during Trump's presidency.

As a result of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as extreme racial tensions, former vice-president Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 elections- winning back Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, as well as winning Arizona. Biden easily flipped back several counties that had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016. The results of the 2020 election caused even more people to believe that the 2016 election was rigged for Trump, and several Democratic fringe groups started calling for the Biden administration to investigate the the 2016 election once more, although the new investigation should focus on specifically what happened on election night rather than what Trump did prior to the election.

Surprisingly, shortly after being sworn in, Biden announced that his administration was going to reinvestigate the validity of the 2016 election. Although Republicans and some Democrats opposed this, Biden said that he was doing this to provide "closure" to those who still believed that Trump stole the election. In this regard, Biden's goal was simply to validate Trump's victory, and dispel rumors to the contrary. However, that wasn't what happened.

About a month into the investigation, the FBI reported that they had uncovered evidence that Russian hackers had meddled with the results in several states. According to the FBI, the hackers breached the voting systems for only a few seconds, which was why it was never noticed. However, in those few seconds, the Russians installed a "virus" whose algorithm was designed to automatically under-report Democratic votes and over-report Republican votes. People tabulating the results never knew what hit them. The FBI also reported that they had spent many hours examining security footage from polling places in pivotal states, and saw that the totals in most Republican counties across Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were very inflated, even when absentee ballots were accounted for. The FBI stated that, based on their findings, the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida were all rigged for Trump to win no matter what, and that the hacks also gave Trump tons of extra nonexistant votes in Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina. The final conclusion of the FBI was expected, but nonetheless extremely shocking- Hillary Clinton had won Michigan and Pennsylvania by at least 200,000 votes, and had won Wisconsin by at least 100,000.

The FBI even released to the public a sort of "game" that emulated how the Russians rigged the election. The object of the "game" was for Hillary Clinton to win Pennsylvania, but it was programmed so that actually "winning" was impossible- people could program there to be massive Democratic turnout in big cities, but when the code runs, it would automatically subtract many of those Democratic votes and turn them into Republican votes in rural areas.