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Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel did two things when she helped former President Donald Trump pressure two Michigan election officials not to certify the 2020 election. First, she put herself in legal jeopardy. Second, she confirmed the Republican Party’s full complicity in Trump’s insurrectionist efforts to overturn the vote.
according to detroit newsOn November 17, 2020, about two weeks after the election, Mr. Trump and Mr. McDaniel called two members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartman, in which they Trump told them it would be “terrible” if they did. I have signed the certification document. Mr. Trump’s pitch appears to have been that voting against certification and then voting for certification would appear inconsistent.
Trump, as usual, encouraged the two Republican senators: “We have to fight for our country.” This is not all that different from his later call for rioters to storm the Capitol on January 6th in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
This is considering that he had asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find just 11,780 votes” so that Biden’s victory in Georgia could be overturned in Trump’s favor. While not a surprising move on Trump’s part, the timing in Michigan is particularly noteworthy.
The newly revealed phone call took place even earlier than what would have been Trump’s ever more desperate attempt in January, and it also echoes Trump’s blatant It shows how early personal interference began.
The call would provide useful evidence of President Trump’s state of mind in a federal election interference case and likely establish new grounds for federal and state charges bordering on bribery.
Here’s why: As part of the call, President Trump promised two Michigan election officials that he would send lawyers to protect them from possible investigations and criminal charges of wrongdoing. There is nothing illegal about paying someone else’s legal claims, but there is something wrong when an offer to pay someone money tempts them to do something illegal. And that’s what it seems may have happened here.
Weeks after the election, with no legal pause on the certification process, U.S. President Trump took the highly unusual step of personally reaching the county level of state government to ask state officials for assistance. . Overturn or halt the election certification process.
And he had help. McDaniel was on the phone with him. The fact that the RNC chairman and the president asked two state-level Republican officials to do something that likely violated the law is an alarming example of the degree of influence they have over state officials.
McDaniel instructed two officials, one of whom, Hartmann, later died. He instructed, “If you go home tonight and don’t sign it…I’ll call a lawyer.” In response, President Trump added, “We will respond.” And it worked. Both officials did not sign the certification and attempted to rescind their original votes for certification the next day.
For McDaniel, it is legally significant that she brought up the idea of paying attorney fees. Her offer could run afoul of Michigan’s criminal bribery law because, as Professor Anthony Michael Kreis puts it, she was “offered a promise in exchange for an official act.”
Kreis also argues that the offer, which provides something of value in the form of a paid attorney, goes a step further than the simple “intimidation” Trump used during his call with Georgia’s secretary of state.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has already charged 16 defendants for their roles in the so-called sham election scheme, and with these new revelations McDaniel could join Nessel’s world of charges. .
The newly uncovered evidence of pressure and possible crimes by Mr. Trump and Mr. McDaniel is important from a criminal justice perspective. But they are also significant evidence of the decline of the Republican Party. It’s hard to imagine anything that better represents the Republican Party’s complete deference to President Trump than the RNC chairman’s phone call with him to pressure state officials. It’s also a sad picture of how complicit the Republican Party is in President Trump’s efforts to incite an insurrection against the Constitution and democratic process in order to maintain his power.
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