Michigan lawmakers to meet Trump amid anger over certification of votes

Michigan Senate Republican Majority Leader and other state lawmakers were greeted Friday with signs from protesters saying “SHAME” and chants of “certifying the vote” as he walked towards the president Donald Trump.

Trump should lean on them to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in that state, according to an NBC News report.

Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and the others were confronted by about 20 protesters after arriving at Reagan International Airport just outside Washington, DC, ahead of their White House meeting.

Trump’s invitation to Michigan lawmakers in an apparent effort to have them overturn the popular presidential vote is considered unprecedented.

“It’s hard to imagine worse, more undemocratic action on the part of a sitting US president,” said US Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah. Romney was the 2012 GOP candidate for president; his late father, George Romney, had been governor of Michigan.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Friday that the meeting between Trump and lawmakers was not an advocacy meeting, and also said that no one in Trump’s campaign – other than Trump himself – even – would not be at the meeting. McEnany said the president “regularly” meets with state officials.

But a Michigan Republican leader close to Shirkey and state House Speaker Lee Chatfield, who was also invited by Trump to the meeting, told NBC News the two expect the two that the president put pressure on them to try to undo Biden’s victory in their state.

But the leader also said that while the men plan to tell Trump that they will pursue his allegations of irregularities and fraud in the votes in Detroit, they will obey Michigan law and will not overturn the certification expected by the ‘Income statement showing victory for Biden.

“I’m sure the president will try to convince them to do it,” the chief told NBC News, referring both to the cancellation of certification of the vote and to the legislator’s appointment of his own voters. to the Electoral College, as opposed to Biden voters. .

But “I find it hard to believe” that they will comply with this request, said the leader.

Under Michigan law, its legislature cannot appoint its own voters who are different from the voters list of the presidential candidate who won the popular vote in the state.

“Legally, they don’t think they have any real legal options. It can’t legally happen in Michigan. That’s what they’re going to tell the president,” the chief said.

Michigan has 16 votes in the electoral college and is one of many states Trump narrowly won in 2016 in his race against Hillary Clinton. But the incumbent Republican president lost the state to Biden this year. Nationally, Biden is expected to win 306 electoral votes, 36 more than he needs to run for president.

Trump refused to concede the election to Biden and allow federal officials to begin a process that would allow the Democrat to begin a transition to the next administration.

Trump and his campaign legal team, led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have repeatedly claimed without evidence that the president was swindled out of a victory in the national election and in Michigan in particular by a widespread fraud. They also falsely claimed that Trump actually won the election.

But the campaign and its allies have lost or withdrawn most of their court cases by making such demands or seeking to challenge the ballots in several states.

On Thursday, the Trump campaign abruptly dropped a federal lawsuit to block certification of votes in Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit.

Giuliani and other campaign lawyers falsely claimed the lawsuit was dropped because the campaign got what it wanted: a refusal by Wayne County election officials to certify the votes there.

In fact, the county election board had voted to certify the results. But two GOP board members who originally opposed the certification, to vote only to confirm the results after an outcry that their objections were unfounded, now say they want to overturn their votes of confirmation.

The media reported that the canvassers were contacted directly by Trump on Tuesday evening.

One of them, Monica Palmer, told NBC News that she and Trump had not discussed her decision to cancel her vote “or anything like that.”

“My conversation with the president was about threats from the public and my safety – not about voiding my vote,” Palmer told NBC.

The Michigan Secretary of State said there was no legal way for GOP members to overrule the votes they cast.

And in any event, state officials and lawyers claim that even if Wayne County Council had not certified the votes there, the ballots would have been certified by a council at the state level. the state.

The Michigan campaign by the campaign was dropped a day after two Michigan women who had a similar federal lawsuit related to the Detroit ballots withdrew their own cases. Their lawyers told CNBC the women dropped their case because it covered many of the same issues as the Trump campaign trial, which they mistakenly expected to continue in court.

Hours after the Michigan campaign file was dropped, the campaign lost a Pennsylvania ballot-counting lawsuit in a county there, saw the Arizona Republican Party lose a challenge to certification of votes in Maricopa County and saw a federal judge in Georgia rejected a request to prevent the state from certifying its vote count.

These four states were won by Biden, according to current projections.

Georgia’s secretary of state certified the results of his presidential race on Friday, confirming that Biden had beaten Trump, after a manual recount of the ballots. Trump’s campaign has until close of business Tuesday to call for an automatic recount of votes cast in Georgia.

The Trump campaign has called for a recount of results in two counties in Wisconsin. The results in those counties, which went heavily for Biden, gave him his margin of victory in the state.