These Senators are playing the safe card until Trump slaps them with reality.
On late Wednesday night, Former President Trump pushed back on claims that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) vetted Trump’s claims about the 2020 presidential election, saying he spent “virtually no time” with the senators.
He also blasted the two Senators saying they should “be ashamed of themselves” for not putting up a fight against what he is calling the “crime of the century.”
“Lindsey and Mike should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win,” he said. “Look at the facts that are coming out in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other States.”
Several states have undertaken reviews of the 2020 results, despite no evidence of serious fraud that would have changed the outcome.
Trump’s comments come on the heels of a Washington Post story this week about the new book “Peril,” which describes efforts by the two senators to personally investigate Trump’s claims of voter fraud as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
The book, by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa, focuses on the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations.
Graham and Lee, both of whom ultimately voted to certify the election results, took the fraud claims seriously enough to get briefed on the details, involve their senior staff, and call state officials throughout the country, the story says. But privately, Graham, according to the book, called the arguments suitable for “third grade.”
Trump said in his statement, “If this were [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, with the evidence we have of Election Fraud (especially newly revealed evidence), they would have never voted to approve [Joe] Biden as President, and had they not, all of the mistakes that were made over the last month, which are destroying our Country, would not have happened.”
“Lee, Graham and all of the other Republicans who were unwilling to fight for the Presidency of the United States, which would have included at least an additional four Republican Senators, two in Georgia, one in Michigan, one in Arizona. They are letting the Democrats get away with the greatest Election Hoax in history — a total con job!” He also said.
During the Saturday meeting, Giuliani had a computer expert present a formula that suggested Biden’s win in some states was unrealistic, but Graham demanded more hard evidence, who at the time chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The book says, including proof that ballots were cast in the names of people younger than 18 and for dead people; Giuliani promised him more details by that Monday.
Several claims, including an assertion that Pennsylvania had processed 682,777 mail-in ballots without proper observation, but a federal judge had rejected a lawsuit making that claim two months before, was in Giuliani’s memos, coming just two days before the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The documents were reviewed by Lee Holmes, Graham’s top attorney for the Judiciary Committee, but Holmes “could find no public records that would even allow someone” to conclude that fraud had taken place, Woodward and Costa wrote that in “Peril.”
They wrote, “Holmes found the sloppiness, the overbearing tone of certainty, and the inconsistencies disqualifying,[They] added up to nothing.”
Meanwhile, on Jan. 2, the same day Graham and Giuliani were meeting, Lee got a two-page White House memo, marked as “privileged and confidential,” that claimed then-Vice President Mike Pence could turn over the election to Trump, according to on “Peril.”
The memo said seven states had dueling slates of electors splitting the vote, and that Pence could set those states aside on Jan. 6 and count only electors from the remaining states.
The book quotes the memo as saying, “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.”
The memo, written by conservative legal scholar John Eastman, was obtained for “Peril” and reviewed by The Washington Post.
A spokesman for Lee didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Woodward and Costa suggested in their book that Lee, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., was surprised that Eastman, a professor at the Chapman University School of Law and former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote the memo.
He said in a Jan. 27 online town hall, appearing to refer to the memo, that he made several phone calls to officials in relevant states but nobody was poised to certify new electors.
Eastman, meanwhile, addressed Trump supporters outside the White House on Jan. 6, and a month later retired from Chapman University.
He told The Post in an email for its story that the memo “explored all options that had been proposed” but that he advised Pence not to act based on dueling electors, as no state legislature had certified an alternative slate. He also said he advised Pence to delay certification of the election results.
Eastman also said that his remarks on Jan. 6 had not been planned and that he had spoken to “fill a gap in the roster of speakers when the president’s arrival was delayed.”
Lee, meanwhile, said in a Fox News interview in February that the former president deserved a “mulligan” for his speech to supporters on Jan. 6.
Sources: Newsmax, Washingtonpost, Donaldjtrump