TRUMP ASKS PA. SPEAKER TO HELP OVERTURN VOTE
President contacted him twice following losses in state court
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, ref lecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result.
The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, make Pennsylvania the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in a call to try to replace that state’s electors.
The president’s outreach to Pennsylvania’s Republican House leader came after his campaign and its allies decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his claims of widespread voting irregularities publicly and privately.
“The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “‘What can we do to fix it?’”
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said. Cutler also made clear that any allegations of fraud would have to be proved in court, Straub said.
But late last week, the House speaker was among about 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them to object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress formally accepts the results.
Although such a move is highly unlikely to gain traction, at least one Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Scott
Perry, said in an interview Monday that he will heed the request and dispute the state’s electors.
The embrace of Trump’s claims by many Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers shows how the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election have gained traction with his supporters. Protesters chanting “Stop the Steal,” some with firearms, demonstrated over the weekend at the homes of Cutler in Pennsylvania and the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan.
Trump stoked those f lames at a rally for two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia on Saturday, when he spoke for an hour and 40 minutes almost exclusively about fraud.
In Pennsylvania, the effort appears to have produced some political results.
In their Dec. 4 letter to the state’s congressional delegation, GOP state lawmakers claimed that the Democratic secretary of state’s easing of election restrictions to accommodate the coronavirus pandemic violated state law and “undermined the lawful certification” of Pennsylvania’s electors.
They asked the state’s congressional members to object to their own state’s electoral votes.
To succeed, such a challenge requires support from both a representative and a senator, and must survive a vote of both chambers. No Republican senator has voiced support for such a maneuver, which in any event would fail in the Democratic-controlled House.
Still, Perry said Monday that he “will honor” the concerns of his state colleagues and is prepared to object.
“My concerns are that we don’t know if this was a fair and free election and that we don’t know if fraud was committed,” he said.
Perry joins Rep Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who last week announced plans to challenge the Electoral College vote.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Trump ally, said Monday that he was “totally for that,” adding that millions of Americans who voted for Trump “think the election was stolen.”
Straub, the spokesman for Cutler, said the letter to the congressional delegation had been in the works before the calls he received from Trump.