“ I take offense at this ”

On Thursday, Republican Senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, criticized accusations of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign as “outrageous” and “offensive.” Trump’s campaign had claimed that Republican and Democratic political leaders colluded with foreign governments to commit widespread electoral fraud in order to win their races and help President-elect Joe Biden win the presidency.

At a press conference on Nov. 19, Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump’s campaign, claimed that “the massive influence of Communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and possibly China” had compelled Republican lawmakers and Democrats to rig the elections.

The rigging, according to Powell, was done by various Democratic and Republican candidates who paid foreign governments to modify voting machines to turn Trump votes into Biden votes and change enough other votes to help others. individual candidates to win their electoral races.

“We have no idea how many Republican or Democratic candidates in any state across the country have paid to have the system rigged to work for them,” Powell said. Powell has presented no evidence to support his claims.

“Senator,” Fox News host Guy Benson asked Ernst in a radio interview Thursday, “did you or any of your Republican colleagues in the Senate pay to have their elections rigged? ?

Ernst, who won his 2020 race by 110,138 votes, took offense at Powell’s claims.

“No,” Ernst replied, “and that is an offensive comment to those of us who stand up and represent our states in a dignified manner.”

“We believe in honesty, we believe in the integrity of our electoral system, which is why I believe if there is fraud there it should be brought to the attention of the court and the truth should to be revealed, ”she told me.

“But to imply that the Republican and Democratic candidates paid to cancel this election,” she continued, “I think that is absolutely outrageous and I take offense.”

She added that she was a veteran who fought to protect “the values ​​and freedoms our nation espouses.”

“To have this accusation casually thrown just to confuse our voters in the United States, I think it is absolutely false,” she concluded.

In his comments on Thursday, Powell suggested that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two electoral software makers whose products were used in various counties for the 2020 election, “were established in Venezuela under the leadership of [former president] Hugo Chávez, “thus suggesting that the South American country used the systems to rig the elections.

However, Dominion Voting Systems is a Canadian company headquartered in Denver, and Smartmatic is a US company headquartered in London. The two companies have disowned any connection with Venezuela, according to The Washington Post.

Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign for comment.