“The president and his allies are playing with fire. They demanded – first the courts, then state legislatures, and now Congress – to cancel the results of the presidential election. They have summoned the judges, but now they have failed. Calls for federal office holders to revoke millions and millions of votes. If big demands are made,” he added. You better have the evidence. But the president does not do that and neither are the institutional members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.
“When we talked in private, I haven’t heard any Republican member of Congress claim that the election results were rigged – not one,” Sassy wrote. Instead, I hear them talk about their concerns about how they ‘perceive’ President Trump’s most ardent supporters.
Hawley is the first senator to announce plans to veto the results, which is important because both the House member and the Senator must file an objection when Congress count the Electoral College votes on January 6.
The objection will not change the election result, and will only delay the inevitable confirmation that Biden will win in November over Trump. Democrats would reject any objections in the House of Representatives, and several Republican senators had argued against an objection that would provide a platform for Trump’s unfounded conspiracy theories claiming the election was stolen from him.
In a Facebook post, Sassy attacked Trump’s intrigues – drawing on botched lawsuits by the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia – and wrote that the president’s lawsuit attempts were a “fundraising strategy.”
Sassy wrote, “This is not a serious verdict. It is swampy policy – and it shows little respect to the loyal people in my state who write these checks.”
Sassi ended his lengthy explanation with a discussion of the responsibility he feels for protecting US institutions at this moment in time.
“Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a group of ambitious politicians who believe that there is a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without causing any real long-term harm. But they are wrong – and this issue is greater than anyone’s ambitions,” Sassi wrote.
The lawsuit – filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch Trump ally – sought to sue Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin, all of which were filed in Biden’s favor, and nullify their election results.
Trump is now looking to next week’s Congressional approval of the results as his next opportunity to nullify the outcome, but the process – even if undertaken by members of Congress opposed to state results – will inevitably end with Biden entering the White House on January 20.
This story has been updated with additional background information.
Jeremy Herb, Phil Mattingly, Lauren Fox and Joan Biscoubek of CNN contributed to this report.
