“DEAD PEOPLE voted!”
“In Wisconsin, a ‘glitch’ added over 100,000 votes to Biden’s tally in the dead of the night, and ZERO to any other candidate.”
Tweets from President Trump? No. A fundraising email from Massachusetts Republican Party chairman Jim Lyons.
Taking a page from the man he’s shown unstinting loyalty to, Lyons is parroting the president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, asking Massachusetts Republicans to pony up money to help unmask the “funny business” he says has led to Joe Biden “falsely posing as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.”
“President Trump needs our help to fight this fraud,” Lyons wrote in a fundraising email sent out Thursday afternoon. The pitch to Massachusetts Republicans follows Trump’s effort to raise money for an “Official Election Defense Fund” he launched to help him contest the election.
Trump has been stirring his base of supporters to believe the election was stolen from him, despite no evidence of voter fraud and statements from top Republican officials in several key states that there were no irregularities in voting there or grounds for the president’s claims.
Lyons said 60 percent of the donations to the state party would be sent to the Trump defense fund.
That money, however, may never be used on anything related to the costs of recounts or litigating the 2020 election. Under the complicated structure set up to raise money, 60 percent of all donations to the fund will go to a separate PAC Trump formed to support other political activity. The other 40 percent will go to the Republican National Committee. Only after a donor has hit the $5,000 limit will some of the money go directly to the recount and election operation.
Efforts by Trump to continue fanning the flames of doubt about the election results have kept nearly all congressional Republicans from recognizing Biden as the president-elect. But Trump’s efforts are running up against resistance from some Republicans closest to the ballot counting and oversight of state election laws.
Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, where Biden has a 14,000-vote lead with nearly all the vote counted, said the election there was conducted fairly and properly. He has nonetheless faced calls to resign from the two GOP candidates who will vie in the state’s January 5 runoff for both of its US Senate seats. Trump has tweeted a series of unfounded allegations of voter fraud in Georgia, and he’s enlisted a Republican congressman there to hunt down evidence of election misconduct, though none has been produced.
The Republican attorney general in Arizona, Mark Brnovich, where Biden leads by about 11,000 votes, told Fox Business, “There is no evidence, there are no facts that would lead anyone to believe that the election results will change.”
On Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker slammed Trump for not acknowledging the election outcome and cooperating with the incoming Biden administration. Baker, who shunned Trump four years ago and said he blanked his ballot this year for the presidential race, has largely abandoned working with the state Republican Party under Lyons in favor an supporting Massachusetts candidates through a super PAC run by close associates of the governor.
Reacting to the continued charges of voter fraud from Trump, and the support he’s received for pursuing investigations from some leading Republicans, Baker said, “I’m dismayed to hear the baseless claims coming from the president, from his team, and from many other elected Republican officials in Washington.”