There is no charitable way to spin President Donald Trump’s reckless claim that millions of undocumented voters cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election. The only evidence of election rigging has pointed to Russians, who, according to U.S. intelligence, hacked Democrats’ e-mails to help Trump get elected.

Yet since late November, Trump has been chipping away at the integrity of the nation’s electoral system by insisting he would have won the popular vote if, as he tweeted then, “you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” in blue states such as California.

There is no evidence of any such large-scale voter fraud. Trump’s own legal team said as much during post-election recounts.

Yet he repeated the false claim again Monday, telling congressional leaders that Huillary Clinton benefited from as many as 5 million undocumented votes. When Democrats protested, the president reportedly repeated an anecdote from a German golf pro whose friend had once been turned away from the polls while Latinos got provisional ballots. On Tuesday, Trump’s increasingly compromised press secretary, Sean Spicer, cited studies that he said would back up Trump’s “longstanding belief” in massive voter fraud, but did not.

On Wednesday, Trump called for “a major investigation into voter fraud, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).” Actually, multiple registration isn’t illegal, only multiple voting. But news organizations soon produced public records showing Trump’s daughter Tiffany, chief strategist Steve Bannon and Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin all fell into Trump’s multiple registration dragnet.

This is ceasing to be amusing. Trump’s investigation, like his border wall and draconian refugee ban, is policy by prejudice, gossip and “alternative fact.”

“If President Trump has evidence of voter fraud at the scale he’s alleging, he should please bring it forward,” Padilla told a Sacramento Bee editorial board member Thursday. In less than a week, Trump has gone from small lies about his inaugural crowd to big ones like this, which could cost taxpayers, pave the way for voter suppression and harm innocents.