According to audio recordings used in a news story on Thursday, Donald Trump encouraged local officials in Michigan not to certify the results of the 2020 election. These are fresh accusations made against the former president, who is been accused of interfering with elections on several occasions.
Despite state and federal indictments against him, Trump is expected to win the Republican nominee in 2024 and is making these accusations as he prepares to run for president again.
According to phone conversations obtained by The Detroit News, Trump put pressure on two local officials to sign off on the certification of the county’s election results. Michigan Vote
He allegedly told the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers that “we’ve got to fight for our country” and that “we can’t let these people take our country away from us.”
The phone call came two weeks after the November 3 election, in which Trump lost the state of Michigan.
Also present on the call was Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, a Michigan native, who at one point told the two: “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”
Trump agreed, adding, “We’ll take care of that.”
Wayne County is home to about 18% of the people in the northern state, and The Detroit News estimates that 878,000 votes were cast there in the 2020 election.
The 77-year-old Trump is scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on federal allegations of plotting to tamper with the outcome of the Democratic Party’s victory in the November 2020 election.
In a different case in the southern state of Georgia, he is charged with similar offenses. In that case, he is known for pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the phone to “find” 11,780 votes, which would overturn Biden’s defeat there.
Trump threatened to make them seem “terrible” if the two Republican county board members from Michigan, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, certified the election results. This was especially true given that they had first voted against the results before going on to approve them.
McDaniel said in a statement to The Detroit News that “What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time… is that there was ample evidence that warranted an audit.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung meanwhile said that Trump’s actions were part of his duty to “ensure election integrity, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 presidential election.”
Trump has repeatedly stated the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden.