Yes, but he hasn't "invited" anyone from those other states to visit him. So, is this an artifact of his vengeance and disdain for Michigan's governor, Gretchen Whitmer, against whom he has incited an assassination plot? Or is there something else afoot?President Trump on Thursday invited Republican state legislators from Michigan to visit the White House as he wages a fierce campaign to undermine the election results in the Wolverine State and other battlegrounds that went for President-elect Joe Biden.
An official familiar with the plans confirmed that the president will meet with Michigan lawmakers Friday, but it was not immediately clear how many will attend and what Trump intends to say upon their arrival.
The meeting comes amid a full-court press by Trump and his legal team to subvert Michigan’s election results, which currently show him losing to Biden by more than 150,000 votes.
His attorneys are also looking to overturn the results in a handful of other states including Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin through lawsuits, efforts to sway the vote certification process and pressuring state lawmakers to send pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.
The Hill
He's already phoned Monica Palmer, one of the Wayne County canvassers who was amenable to refusing to certify the election results, and who now wants to rescind her capitulation. Now it's a question at the state level.“It is telling that Michigan GOP legislative leaders Mike Shirkey and Lee Chatfield are jetting off to Washington DC this week to meet with President Trump. They are more focused on continuing the GOP smoke and mirrors show designed to hide Trump's humiliating defeat than taking care of the actual problems impacting Michiganders,” the [Michigan Democratic] party said in a statement on behalf of Chair Lavora Barnes.
Sure, Monica.One of the two Republicans on the four-member Michigan Board of State Canvassers on Thursday said he is leaning toward calling for a delay in the certification of the state’s election results until an official audit has been completed.
“I do think with all of the potential problems, if any of them are true, an audit is appropriate,” Norman Shinkle said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “I take one step at a time, and if we can get more information, why not?”
Shinkle reportedly cited among his concerns a since-debunked claim from President Trump and his allies that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of voting machines, deleted thousands of votes that had been cast in favor of the president.
[...]
Shinkle told the Post on Thursday that, “my job is to try to do the right thing for the vote in Michigan,” adding that “the odds are probably that he [Biden] will become president.”
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Shinkle added that he has been getting calls from fellow Republicans trying to convince him to not certify the vote in Michigan, which The Associated Press and other news outlets projected President-elect Joe Biden would win.
AP projections showed Biden leading Trump in the state by more than 155,000 votes as of Thursday.
[...]
Monica Palmer, a GOP member of the Wayne County, Mich., canvassing board, told the Post that Trump called her Tuesday night after she and fellow Republican board member William Hartmann initially refused to certify election results.
The two eventually relented and certified the results, but on Wednesday both Palmer and Hartmann sought to rescind their certification.
Palmer denied that she felt pressured by Trump to reverse course after agreeing to certify the vote. She indicated the two discussed the results in different states, but "we really didn’t discuss the details of the certification."
At this point, it seems that Trump, knowing he can't overturn the election, is hell bent on changing the number of electoral votes Biden got to less than 306 - the same number Trump got in 2016. He wants to at least be able to say he got more.Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold, is home to Detroit and voted overwhelmingly for Biden.
I suspect Shirkey and Chatfield are simply exercising a Republican taste for publicity.The scheduled meeting threatens two kinds of danger. At the largest level, it threatens the system of democratic presidential elections: If state officials start claiming the right to overturn elections because of vague claims about “fraud,” our democratic system will be unworkable. But in a more specific and immediate way, it threatens the two Michigan legislators, personally, with the risk of criminal investigation.
The danger to democratic elections is well understood. The Constitution authorizes state legislatures to decide how states choose presidential electors. For more than a century, every state legislature has chosen to do so by popular election. According to one school of thought, though, a state legislature could choose to set aside a popular vote if it doesn’t like the result and choose different electors instead. This is a pretty undemocratic idea, as well as one that misreads the history of election law: the National Review recently described it as “completely insane.” (State legislatures have the power to change the system for choosing electors in future elections, but not to reject an already conducted election just because they don’t like the result.)
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Why, exactly, does Trump want to see these two men in person, in his office? It isn’t to offer evidence that Michigan’s election was tainted and should therefore be nullified. If he had any such evidence, his lawyers would have presented it in court, rather than abandoning their Michigan lawsuit as they did today. It’s also unlikely that Trump is planning to persuade the Michiganders through subtle legal arguments about their constitutional role. Subtle argument isn’t really Trump’s way of doing things.
The president is a deal-maker, and it’s far more likely that his agenda is transactional. When considering a course of action, he doesn’t think about principles; he thinks about what’s in it for whom. So it makes sense to think that he is inviting Shirkey and Chatfield for a private meeting to offer them something.
[...]
The danger for Shirkey and Chatfield, then, is that they are being visibly invited to a meeting where the likely agenda involves the felony of attempting to bribe a public official.
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Shirkey and Chatfield are already on record—admirably—as being against a legislative intervention to ignore the popular vote and reallocate Michigan’s electors. If they take a meeting with a man who desperately wants them to change their minds, and who has no scruples about what kind of leverage he might use to get it, and then they do change their minds and try to send Michigan’s electors to Trump, the possibility that they were bribed will be screamingly obvious.And the relevant prosecutor—Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel—is a straight-shooting Democrat who does not pal around with Shirkey and Chatfield. If she thought the facts justified an investigation, Shirkey and Chatfield would be investigated.
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And the relevant prosecutor—Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel—is a straight-shooting Democrat who does not pal around with Shirkey and Chatfield. If she thought the facts justified an investigation, Shirkey and Chatfield would be investigated.
Politico
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
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