Former President Donald Trump and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel are trying to pressure Detroit election officials not to sign the certification of Michigan’s 2020 election results, according to a report.
“We have to fight for our country,” Trump reportedly told two officials with the Wayne County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 17, 2020, according to a recording reviewed by the Detroit News. “We cannot let these people take our country from us.”
He also told the couple, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, that it would be “terrible” to find them to sign off on the state election results after previously voting against confirming them during the call. Both Republican members of the Wayne County board of canvassers then voted to ratify the 2020 ballot results.
McDaniel, who was also on the call, suggested that both Palmer and Hartmann would be offered legal representation, possibly by the RNC, if they decided not to sign the certification document.
“If you can go home tonight, don’t sign it. … We will get you a lawyer,” he reportedly said.
“We’ll take care of it,” Trump added.
McDaniel argued that if the election was certified without an audit, voters “wouldn’t know what happened in Detroit.” Reuters
Palmer and Hartmann did not sign the official statement of votes for Wayne County and failed to rescind their votes in favor of the certification of the Michigan election results the day after the call.
The call came about 30 minutes after the end of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting on November 17, 2020, according to the Detroit News.
Trump further claimed that Republicans were “rigged in this election” and that “everyone knows Detroit is crooked as hell.”
Palmer and Hartmann received Trump’s call from a car parked outside a Detroit election building. Michigan United
“How can anyone sign something when you have more votes than people?” the 77-year-old former president said during the call.
McDaniel, a Michigan native and Wayne County resident, argued that if the election is upheld without an audit, voters “won’t know what’s going on in Detroit.”
He told the Detroit News that former Vice President Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory in the state “warrants an audit.”
Both McDaniel and Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox formally requested the audit in a November 21, 2020 letter to the State Board of Canvassers.
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“What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time, as referenced in my letter of November 21, 2020, was that there was sufficient evidence that warranted an audit,” McDaniel told the outlet.
Hartmann and Palmer both acknowledged in 2020 that they had received calls from Trump and McDaniel, and that the calls occurred while the pair were sitting in a car parked outside a Wayne County election building.
“The numbers haven’t improved, they’re still 71% lopsided, Wayne County, Michigan, Canvassers said,” Trump tweeted the morning after the call. “There was widespread irregularities in the voting numbers. There are more votes than people. Two harassed patriot Canvassers refused to sign the paper!”
Biden edged Trump in Michigan by about 154,000 votes in 2020 — 50.6% to 47.8% — and easily defeated the incumbent in Wayne County by a margin of 38 percentage points.
Trump, the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner, was indicted in Georgia and by a federal grand jury earlier this year over his alleged efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.
“All of President Trump’s actions were taken to carry out his duties as President of the United States to uphold the law and ensure the integrity of the election, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“President Trump and the American people have a Constitutional right to free and fair elections. Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are reeling in the face of terrible polling numbers and desperate to leak misleading information to interfere in the election.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
