A group of top Republican lawmakers from Michigan arrived in Washington, D.C., on Friday to meet with President Trump at the White House, sparking speculation that the president seeks to have Republican-controlled legislatures in that state and others select a pro-Trump slate of electors in order to deny Joe Biden an Electoral College win—rumors that the legislators have denied.
Two of the leaders invited to the meeting were Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield, both of whom agreed to sit down with the president. Jason Wentworth, who is succeeding Chatfield as speaker, was also spotted at the D.C. airport.
Despite the speculation, both Shirkey and Chatfield have suggested they wouldn’t overturn Biden’s win in Michigan.
“That’s not going to happen,” Shirkey said. “We are going to follow the law and follow the process,” he added. “I do believe there’s reason to go slow and deliberate as we evaluate the allegations that have been raised.”
Chatfield tweeted on November 6: “Whoever gets the most votes will win Michigan! Period. End of story. Then we move on.”
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who serves as President Trump’s personal attorney and has now taken over the campaign’s legal fight, said that he would be on-hand at the meeting to take questions from the president and from Michigan lawmakers “because I probably know the case better than anyone else.”
This comes after Giuliani and other attorneys with the Trump campaign hosted a Thursday press conference outlining their legal strategy to prove the existence of voter fraud that allegedly swung the election in Biden’s favor.
Giuliani explained how fraud among mail-in ballots was carried out. Pennsylvania was among the worst examples.
“The number of voter fraud cases in Philadelphia could fill a library,” Giuliani said, adding that there have been multiple recent convictions there for vote fraud. Among other facts, Giuliani said more than 17,000 provisional ballots were cast in Pittsburgh alone. This, he suggested, was powerful evidence of fraud — especially because some 15,000 of those provisional ballots were for people who were told they had already voted. Likely, fraudsters sent in large numbers of phony Democrat ballots and then gave provisional ballots to anyone who showed up in person to cast a vote.
Democrats were enraged that the Republican leaders would meet with the president and accused them of attempting to subvert “democracy” (as always, neglecting the fact that America is not a democracy, but a republic).
“It is my thought that in the end, the election [in Michigan] will be certified,” Jonathan Kinloch, the Democratic vice chair of the Wayne County, Michigan, Board of Canvassers, said on CNN Friday morning. “We’re talking about a lame duck president, and I do not think anyone wants to revisit what occurred in 2016 by being a co-conspirator to any campaign that’s trying to disenfranchise or to basically hijack the votes in this election.”
“I’m going to hope that our Republican leaders that are at the White House are going to be responsible,” Representative Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said on MSNBC. “They know what their job is to do, and that they will come back and do their job honorably.”
Not only Democrats, but some Republicans, are criticizing the president for meeting with the Michigan delegation.
“While the president has the right to legitimate legal challenges, responsible citizens cannot let the reckless actions by him and his legal team stand,” tweeted former Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. “Republicans have an obligation when the subject is of such importance to challenge demagoguery and patently false statements.”
“Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President,” wrote Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a statement that prompted President Trump to call the failed presidential candidate a “RINO.”
Democrats and the mainstream media continue to insist that there is “no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” with outlet after outlet parroting the talking point verbatim. When you see such a coordinated media narrative, you can be sure the truth is most likely the very opposite.
