Trump wanted state to disqualify 221,000 ballots he claims were cast illegally
On Friday, Wisconsin’s Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections will hold a hearing on the 2020 presidential election and that is where Rep. Ron Tusler, the Republican chairman of the committee, hopes to get a clearer picture about the outcome.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel interviewed Tusler in a report Wednesday and said the Republican indicated that he is not sure about which candidate actually carried the state and its 10 electoral votes, and said he might help the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature attempt to flip the state for President Trump. The Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.
“When we hear from these folks on Friday I think we’ll find out a little bit more about the reservations folks have on this election and I think that that hopefully will be able to tell us whether this is something that cost Donald Trump 21,000 votes or not And if it did, then I think we need to seriously consider it. But if it’s just hypothetical … then I don’t think that’s enough,” he told the paper.
When asked by the paper if he agreed with election officials who say Joe Biden won, he responded, “Ask me after the hearing. I think we’re going to get some new information at that hearing.”
Last month, the Wisconsin Examiner reported that Tusler said his office received about 1,000 calls questioning how Joe Biden was able to take the state by about 21,000 votes. Tusler did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News.
“There are some people who believe that our electoral process worked perfectly on November 3, there are many people … that do not trust the results of this election,” Tusler told the paper at the time. “And we need people to have faith in our elections in Wisconsin.”
Trump has insisted that the only reason that Biden was named the winner was because of widespread voter fraud and a subsequent coverup. Critics of the president say he has not proven his case and point to the legal setbacks that his team experienced.
Last week, a federal judge in Wisconsin called one of Trump’s lawsuits “bizarre.”
Trump’s team argued that hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast in accordance with Wisconsin’s guidelines were illegal and wanted the judge to give the Republican-controlled Legislature the power to determine who won the election.
U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, a Trump appointee, said, “I have a very, very hard time seeing how this is justiciable in the federal court. The request to remand this case to the Legislature almost strikes me as bizarre.”
Bill Bock, the Trump campaign attorney in the federal lawsuit, said Trump needed the court to rule that the election was “invalid” so the Legislature could get involved. He also said that the term “remand,” which is typically used to describe when one court sends a case to a lower court, was “inartful.”
Seventeen states filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting the Texas lawsuit aimed at delaying the appointment of presidential electors from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The brief mirrors the argument of the Texas suit in saying that the states acted unconstitutionally when either their judiciaries or executive branches changed their elections laws. The Texas suit, and the states that support it, say that only state legislatures may set laws regarding how states appoint their presidential electors.
Democrats on Tulser’s committee said they expect little to change after the Friday hearing.
