President Donald Trump’s lawyers desperately begged Pennsylvania lawmakers to change the way they elect presidential voters or consider calling a special election in order to overthrow the election results.
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his legal counsel, Jenna Ellis, pushed for these opportunities at a hearing at the Senate Republican Political Committee on Wednesday. However, according to the Office of the Republican Legislative Leaders, these legal bases have fallen on deaf ears.
“We’ve been clear from the start: the General Assembly has no role in electing voters,” Jason Gottesman, a spokesman for the Republican majority in the House, said after the hearing.
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He further noted that the GOP leaders of the House do not intend to recall the members of the House before the end of the 2019-2020 legislature on 30 November.
Senate GOP spokesman Jenn Kocher said Senate Republican leaders, who have a majority in this chamber, also have no plans to recall senators to Harrisburg.
Senator Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) organized the committee hearing on Wednesday.
Senator Doug Mastriano, a Trump supporter in R-Franklin County who asked for a hearing to look at election issues, said it was time for decisive action.
“Two things have to happen,” Mastriano said when the three-and-a-half-hour trial was over.
“First of all, we need to make sure the real winner is sent to the presidential election,” he said, evoking applause from the roommates at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg. “And in second place, we have to solve this so that it never happens again.”
State and local election officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the Pennsylvania election.
On Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf confirmed the election results, according to which President-elect Joe Biden won the state more than 81,000 votes. A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday instructed state officials to take further steps to verify the election results; the Wolf administration filed an appeal against the decision. Trump’s repeated legal attempts to overthrow the election were thwarted by state and federal judges.
During the trial, Republican representatives heard allegations of voter fraud and election rigging by more than a dozen Trump pollers, voters, and others.
Among them was a Philadelphia poll observer who claimed to have been denied entry to the polling station. Trump’s observers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh complained that they were being kept too far away from the ballot papers to ensure its proper implementation.
An 80-year-old voter said he voted for Trump, but the paper ballot did not show that the voting machine had produced it. The allegations of a computer expert who said voting machines can be manipulated in the distribution of votes, which the voting machine manufacturer called unfounded and unfounded.
One of the participants in the hearing appeared by telephone: the chairman. Trump revealed that he wanted to attend in person, but he called and spoke for 11 minutes. When Ellis interrupted that she had a special guest and held the microphone on her phone, Trump said, “Let me finish the confession, that’s fantastic.” He said he was listening.
Trump then reiterated the accusations cheated by Democrats and said, “It was an election we could easily win.”
The Pennsylvania State Department, which oversees the election, has condemned Trump’s “falsities.”
“The tired conspiracy theories repeated in Gettysburg today have been annihilated and rejected by the courts. Continuing these lies in front of the cameras will only hurt the democracy that so many Americans have died to protect, ”said Ellen Lyon, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. “The facts are clear: Pennsylvania held free, fair and safe elections. Millions of Pennsylvaniaans followed the rules and voted.
Democratic lawmakers criticized the nearly three dozen House of Representatives and Senate Republican lawmakers who attended the hearing in person or through Zoomo for using taxpayer dollars to support a partisan event they thought was.
“If Senate Republicans want to entertain conspiracy theories on the part of Rudy Giuliani and gather with defeated presidential candidate Donald Trump, they have to do so according to their own time and time – not the taxpayers,” said Senate Democrat leader Allegheny County. Communication. . “Our process was safe and our counting was accurate: a weekly counted counting that made today’s hearing even more unfit.”
Maria Collett, a senator from D-Montgomery County, said any pretense as if the Republican committee hearing was a “legislative trial” evaporated when Trump’s attorneys proposed a special election “on behalf of our client”.
Giuliani also asked the state to withdraw the verification of election results and then not report “inadequately verified votes”. When I say they have been properly inspected, they have not been inspected at all, ”he said. “You could almost think that the hidden votes count in the back room where everyone smoked.
“One option cannot be to ignore it and justify a corrupt, irrevocably corrupt election,” Ellis said.
Ellis suggested another option. He stressed that the legislature has the constitutional power to change the way presidential voters are elected and that they are not obliged to appoint voters who support the winner of the state referendum.
Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have shown no willingness to take such steps.
Senate Majority Leader and future Temp Tempore Senate President Jake Corman, R-Center County, said earlier this month that while the legislature could oversee the election and question the process, lawmakers “certainly want to stay in the popular folk tradition. the winner of the vote is the acquisition of the electorate. “
Ellis went on to suggest to lawmakers that they examine the issues raised by witnesses, the safety of voting machines, and impede the control of the executive over the election.
Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, mostly undisguised and not socially distant, attended a Senate hearing on election issues centered on allegations by President Trump’s legal group about irregularities in state elections that the courts found mostly unfounded. November 25, 2020 Snapshot of Pa. Senate’s website
Senate Majority Committee Chairman Dave Argall of R-Schuylkill County said, “There is no doubt that based on what we have learned today, we will pass legislation in the House and Senate.”
The hotel that is the scene of the trial is about a mile from the site of Pickett’s indictment, where EU troops repulsed the desperate Confederate attack in July 1863. This helped in the flood of American civil war against the slave-owning South.
Former Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican who publicly expressed his support for Biden, noted Gettysburg’s historic significance when he criticized Trump for overthrowing the election.
Ridge wrote in a Twitter post: “History captures the shameful irony that a president who lied to avoid military service organized a fake event in the dedicated areas of Gettysburg in a brazen attempt to undermine the Republic, for which there were plenty of true patriots. he has fought and died for preservation since its founding. “
Jan Murphy is available at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
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