Donald Trump's refusal to accept his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden was so entrenched that some aides privately wondered whether it amounted to a 'mental disorder,' according to a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, which also details how the Justice Department later moved to seize Fulton County's 2020 Georgia ballots.
Trump Aides and the 2020 Defeat
The claim appears in 'Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,' the new book by Haberman and Swan, which draws on hundreds of interviews and set out to map Trump's return to power in his second term. To recall, Trump never accepted the 2020 result, kept pushing election-fraud narratives and leaned on allies and officials as he tried to rewrite the story of his loss.
In the book's telling, that refusal went well beyond routine political denial. The authors write that while Trump clung to the idea he had won, 'nearly all his closest advisors privately accepted he had lost,' and some aides thought his fixation on the loss looked like 'a form of mental disorder.' That is a serious allegation, and it is attributed here to the book's reporting rather than presented as a clinical diagnosis.
The language is ugly, but it reflects the atmosphere around Trump after January 6, when the Capitol riot made his refusal to move on even more toxic. Instead of treating the defeat as a finished chapter, he kept the grievance alive and turned it into political fuel.
DOJ and the Georgia Ballots
The book links that mindset to the later push by federal authorities to obtain Fulton County election material, including ballots and 2020 records from Georgia, a county that has long been central to Trump-aligned fraud claims. In February, reporting on a court filing showed the FBI had seized more than 650 boxes of ballots and related material from Fulton County on 28 January after a judge authorised the search warrant.
Those records became the subject of a Justice Department lawsuit filed in December 2025, which asked a federal court to compel Fulton County to hand over ballots, signature envelopes and digital files tied to the 2020 election. The county had said the materials were sealed and could not be released without a court order, while the department argued the documents were needed to assess compliance with federal election law.
In May said a federal judge declined a Fulton County request to force the FBI to return the seized ballots, leaving the materials in federal custody for now. That matters because the dispute is not just about one county's paperwork, but about how far federal law enforcement can go when an election conspiracy theory refuses to die.
What the Book Suggests
Haberman and Swan's broader argument is that Trump's second presidency has been shaped by grievance, revenge and a workforce around him that is far more willing to indulge him than the first time round. The authors say the administration has used the machinery of government in ways that reflect his obsession with the 2020 loss, with the Justice Department turned, in their words, into an instrument of retribution.
Trump is no longer just peddling the old falsehoods from the campaign trail, he is back in office and parts of the system now move in step with the mythology he spent years building. For election officials, especially in states where margins are tight and partisan temperature is already ridiculous, that creates a fresh layer of tension ahead of another bruising year of voting.
The book does not provide a medical assessment, and it should not be read as one. But its portrait of aides whispering about Trump's inability to accept defeat is a reminder of how strange, and frankly mad, the post-2020 era has been. And if Fulton County is any guide, the paperwork wars are not over yet.
