A handful of Republicans, even some of Trump’s closest allies, have offered negative views of his call with officials in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, which was released on Sunday.
The call involved Trump requesting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to look into the results of the 2020 election, urging him to find about 11,000 votes he believes he is owed.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a staunch Trump ally, asserted that election integrity should be up to state officials and not those in power at the federal level.
“This call was not a helpful call,” Blackburn said Monday on Fox & Friends. “The states are the ones that are going to resolve this issue. We do not have federalized elections in this country. We do not want federalized elections in this country.”
Blackburn is among roughly a dozen Republican senators who vowed to object to certifying the election results in favor of President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday. She is joined by Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ron Johnson, in addition to newly elected senators such as Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the offices of all 12 lawmakers who said they would dissent to Biden’s victory.
Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who has been a vocal critic of Trump’s resistance to accept the election results, said the call was “absolutely appalling” in a tweet and said those objecting to the results could not “do so with a clean conscience.”
Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday that he was “disappointed” in the call, adding that Trump should remain focused on bolstering voter turnout for the Senate runoff races on Tuesday.
“I was disappointed at the tone, at the intent, at the questioning. I’ve continued to encourage everybody, including the president, to stay focused on tomorrow,” Duncan said. “That phone call did absolutely nothing to help, you know, drive turnout for Republicans here in Georgia for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.”
Perdue and Loeffler’s races are expected to determine which party will control the Senate. Perdue, facing Democrat Jon Ossoff, defended the president on his call and offered his own criticism of Raffensperger.
“To have a statewide elected official, regardless of party, tape without disclosing a conversation, a private conversation, with the president of the United States and then leaking it to the press is disgusting,” Perdue said Monday on Fox News.
In the call, Trump urged Raffensperger to reexamine the results of the election by Monday, claiming he won the state of Georgia. Election officials, however, stood by their results, which put Biden ahead by about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democrat to flip the state blue in decades.
“We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump told Raffensperger in the call.
While campaigning in Georgia, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called Trump’s call a “bald-faced, bold abuse of power.”
Some Democrats went further to express their dismay at Trump’s conversation, pushing FBI Director Christopher Wray to seek a criminal investigation into Trump over the call, according to NBC News.
Reps. Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice wrote to Wray, saying they believed Trump engaged in “solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes” and asked for an immediate criminal investigation to be opened on the president’s behavior.
“The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight,” the lawmakers wrote. “The prima facie elements of the above crimes have been met. Given the more than ample factual predicate, we are making a criminal referral to you to open an investigation into Mr. Trump.”
Trump has not conceded to Biden and has vowed to continue his efforts to fight the results of his loss. Congress is set to certify the results indicating Biden as the victor on Wednesday. Trump has promised a large protest against such a move on the same day.
