Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday suggested to Pennsylvania GOP state senators that they have the power to vote and choose their own electors, while citing allegations of voter fraud in the Keystone State.
In a Pennsylvania Senate Republican Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg, the former New York City mayor said that the U.S. Constitution stipulates that state legislators are empowered with the ability to nullify a state’s electors and can send their own to the Electoral College.
An election is “not run by the governor or an election commission,” he argued, pointing to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. “It’s your power ... it’s your responsibility,” Giuliani said to the Republican senators, adding that “you have to convince other members of the legislature” to vote to send up their own slate of electors.
“ABC doesn’t get to call the winner ... or CNN,” Giuliani elaborated.
Pennsylvania’s House and Senate are both controlled by Republicans. The Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.
Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said she has seen no evidence of voter fraud or mass irregularities that would overturn the election results in the state. State data shows that Biden leads Trump by about 80,000 votes. Other secretaries in other states where the results are being challenged have echoed those claims.
President Donald Trump’s campaign has filed lawsuits in a bid to overturn 672,000 votes—which would easily flip the state from Biden to Trump—because, according to Giuliani, Democratic officials in some areas such as Philadelphia didn’t allow GOP observers to see the verification of the outer envelope.
Once the outer envelope is removed, there’s no way to verify the ballots, he added.
“I know crooks really well. You give them an inch, they take a mile. You give them a mile, they take the whole country,” Giuliani said, claiming that elections officials engaged in a scheme to fix the election for Democrat Joe Biden.
“If we allow an election in the future to be conducted the way this election was conducted we will have lost our democracy, our representative democracy,” he said in his remarks.
Giuliani then responded to claims that Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters by filing lawsuits.
“We want to disqualify 672,000 votes so that 74 million people are not disenfranchised,” Giuliani said, referring to the number of people who voted for President Trump.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, announced that the results of the election were certified by the Secretary of State’s office. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Michigan’s Board of Canvassers also certified their elections, although legal challenges are pending.
