On Thursday, July 16, 2026, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville went on Newsmax and accused several of his own colleagues of stealing their seats.

"We probably have four or five senators that didn't legally win," he said. "They shouldn't be up here."

He also said Democrats had cheated President Trump. "They put the screws to him. There's no doubt. I've seen the evidence," Tuberville told the network, according to AL.com.

Then he did what he always does when someone asks him to back it up: nothing. He named no senators. He showed no evidence. When AL.com asked his office to explain, a spokeswoman told the reporter to go watch Trump's speech that night. That's it. A sitting U.S. senator says four or five of his colleagues are frauds who don't belong in office — and his proof is "watch TV later."

There is no evidence, because it didn't happen

Let's be clear about what Tuberville is claiming. He is saying American elections are rigged and that people are serving in the Senate right now who lost.

This is not true. There is no proof any of it is true.

Despite years of state and federal investigations, no one has found widespread fraud or foreign interference that changed a single election result. Even Trump's own Justice Department looked into it back in 2021. It found that Russia, Iran, and China had considered trying to influence American elections — but it also found they did not actually alter any vote counts. Noncitizen voting is already illegal, and real cases of it are extremely rare.

So Tuberville isn't revealing a scandal. He's inventing one. And he's doing it about the very institution he serves in — telling Alabamians that the people they see voting on the Senate floor are cheaters, with nothing to show for it but a hunch and a TV hit.

This is who Tuberville has always been

If this sounds familiar, it should. Tuberville has spent his entire time in Washington attacking the results of elections he doesn't like.

He got started before he was even sworn in. Just two days after the 2020 election, he tweeted that the results were "out of control," comparing Joe Biden's win to referees "adding touchdowns" after the game was over. Then, before taking office, he announced he'd object to certifying Biden's Electoral College victory.

On January 6, 2021, as a mob stormed the Capitol, Tuberville was on the phone with Trump. He told the president that Vice President Mike Pence had just been evacuated — and about 20 minutes later, Trump sent the tweet attacking Pence that fired up the "Hang Mike Pence" chants among the rioters. That same night, hours after the attack, Tuberville voted to reject the Electoral College results anyway.

After that, he:

• Voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the mob, saying "There are no winners today."
• Voted against creating an independent commission to investigate January 6, telling reporters, "I'd rather be fishing right now, or golfing."
• Said in 2022 that nothing from the January 6 committee would "change my mind on anything."

His latest Newsmax claim isn't a one-off. It's the same move he's been running for six years: whenever Republicans lose or Democrats win, the election must have been stolen.

The hypocrisy: he may have broken the voting rules himself

Here's the part that should really bother Alabama voters. The man warning you about illegal voting has his own voting problem.

Tuberville registered to vote in Walton County, Florida in 2017. He and his wife then voted in Florida in November 2018 — after the time he claims he had already become an Alabama resident. He stayed on Florida's voter rolls until March 2020.

Now he's running for Governor of Alabama, and the state constitution says a candidate must have lived in Alabama for seven years before the election. A Republican rival challenged whether he even qualifies. The challenge was appealed all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court.

So the senator lecturing everyone about who "legally" won is the same senator who voted in one state while claiming to live in another. When it's your rights on the line, he wants strict rules and proof. When it's his, he wants everyone to trust him.

What this is really about: the SAVE America Act

Tuberville didn't make his comments in a vacuum. He went on Newsmax right before Trump's primetime speech demanding that Congress pass the SAVE America Act.

That bill would require people to show a photo ID and documentary proof of citizenship just to register to vote. Supporters call it common sense. But it would force eligible citizens to dig up documents like a passport or birth certificate just to do something they already have the legal right to do — and the people who don't have those papers on hand are the ones who'd get blocked.

The bill passed the House but is stuck in the Senate, where it doesn't have the votes. Even some Republicans don't buy it. Holdouts are skeptical the bill is even needed or that it would actually protect anything, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it "fundamentally flawed and impossible to implement by this election." Trump has pushed Senate Republicans to kill the filibuster to jam it through, and even that doesn't have the votes.

Tuberville is all in. Last month he tied it directly to keeping power: "If we don't do something with the filibuster, and we don't get things passed, it'll be the last time we have a Republican President or a Republican Congress. The ball's in our court."

Read that again. He's not selling the SAVE Act as a way to protect your vote. He's selling it as a way to protect his party's control. The scary stories about stolen elections are the sales pitch. Making it harder to register is the product.

We deserve better

Alabamians deserve a senator who tells them the truth, not one who smears his own colleagues as cheaters to win a news cycle and sell a voter-restriction bill. Tuberville has no evidence — he admitted as much by refusing to give any. What he does have is a six-year record of trying to overturn results he doesn't like, and a personal voting history that looks a lot like the "fraud" he claims to hate.

Source

This post is based on reporting by Ruth Serven Smith for AL.com: "Tommy Tuberville claims 'four or five' US senators 'didn't legally win' but offers no evidence" and "Alabama Republicans back Trump's 'rigged' election claims in push for SAVE America Act."