Trump caught in another recording
Motown’s Berry Gordy might have set the recording to music but Detroit News got there first:
Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.
On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.
“We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”
Trump didn’t insist they “find 11,780 votes,” but you get the idea. Special prosecutor Jack Smith and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel will too. Nessel had best increase her personal security before expressing her interest publicly.
McDaniel, a Michigan native and the leader of the Republican Party nationally, said at another point in the call, “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”
To which Trump added: “We’ll take care of that.”
Help me Ronna | Help, help me Ronna
Is it time for McDaniel to lawyer up?
Palmer and Hartmann left the meeting without signing the Wayne County certification. The next day, they tried and failed to rescind their votes for certification, Detroit News adds.
McDaniel, a Wayne County resident, said she stood by her past push for an audit of the election in Michigan, a request she and then-Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox made in a Nov. 21, 2020, letter to the Board of State Canvassers.
“What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time, as referenced in my letter on Nov. 21, 2020, is that there was ample evidence that warranted an audit,” McDaniel said in a statement.
But Jonathan Kinloch, who was a Democratic member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in November 2020, said what happened on the call with Trump was “insane.”
“It’s just shocking that the president of the United States was at the most minute level trying to stop the election process from happening,” said Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner.
At another point in the conversation, McDaniel told the pair that if they certified without demanding an audit, people would “never know what happened in Detroit.”
Trump leveled similar fraud accusations against heavily Black communities in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Trump insisted on social media that in Detroit there were more votes than people. “I win Michigan!” he insisted.
Detroit News reminds readers that Trump’s statement was incorrect.
“If ballots had been illegally counted, there would be substantially more, not slightly fewer, ballots tabulated than names in the poll books,” Jonathan Brater, the director of the state Bureau of Elections, wrote in a 2020 affidavit submitted in response to a lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell of “Kraken” fame.
A spokesman for the RNC declined Politico’s request for comment on the Detroit News story:
“All of President Trump’s actions were taken in furtherance of his duty as President of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election. President Trump and the American people have the Constitutional right to free and fair elections,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the former president, said in a statement to POLITICO.
Comparisons with Trump’s recorded call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are obvious. Mark Meadows has insisted his participation on the Georgia call was simply part of his role as the president’s chief of staff. Election integrity and all that.
So much criming
Conservative attorney George Conway told CNN on Thursday that the report could lead to additional charges against Trump (Raw Story):
“I mean, there is no factual basis given for the claim there was fraud, and there was intimidation involved,” Conway continued. “And according to the Detroit News article, it’s suggested by a former elections official there that in essence what was happening here, he suggests, is that they were being induced by the — by the promise of legal protection, by the promise of getting attorneys for them to violate their official duties, which potentially could be an additional crime under Michigan law.”
And possibly charges for McDaniel:
“It’s one big fix”
If someone has set “Everthing Trump Touches Dies” to music, I haven’t seen it. In the meantime….
Update: Fallout
Happy Hollandaise!