Trump and Jared Kushner’s 'galling' scheme to profit from election lies revealed

A little-noticed nugget unearthed by the Jan. 6 committee found Donald Trump tried to profit off his election lies by trademarking one of his catchphrases about his loss.

The investigation dug up an email from former White House chief of staff Dan Scavino sent to Jared Kushner showing the former president wanted to obtain trademark protection for the phrase "rigged election," reported Los Angeles Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg.

“Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see — or ask,” Scavino said in the email just days after the 2020 election.

Kushner then forwarded the message, titled "POTUS requests," to various White House aides urging them to take action.

“Guys — Can we do ASAP please?” Kushner said, highlighting the phrase "Rigged Election!" in the email.

Presumably, Goldberg wrote, the ex-president hoped to raise money by hawking merchandise based on his corrosive lie about the election while muscling other vendors out of the way.

"What’s especially galling about it is that Trump would have been profiting off an utter lie, a cynical political manipulation that threatened to undermine American democracy: the pretense that the 2020 election had been stolen from him," Goldberg wrote. "In the end, Trump did not successfully trademark the phrase, or perhaps was talked out of it by his lawyers. The rest of us can continue to sell 'Rigged Election' caps if we choose to."