Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Monday (Nov. 9) voiced support for President Trump’s filing of multiple lawsuits challenging the election results. “President Trump has 100 percent of the right to investigate allegations of (election) irregularities and to deliberate on the legal options he wants to take,” McConnell said.
The Senate convened on Monday for its first House session since the U.S. election. McConnell did not congratulate Biden, who was predicted by the US media to be the president-elect, or acknowledge Democratic presidential candidate Biden as the next US president in his speech to the chamber.
“Obviously, there are no states where the election results have been certified yet. We have at least one or two states where recounts have been initiated, and I believe the president is likely to pursue legal challenges (to the election process) in at least five states,” McConnell said in his 12-minute House address.
McConnell reiterated his tweet from last week that said “all legal ballots must be counted, no illegal ballots should be counted,” and that all processes must be transparent or conducted in a manner that can be monitored by all parties. He added that the courts would handle all disputes.
“President Trump has 100 percent authority to investigate allegations of (election) irregularities and to deliberate on the legal options he wants to take,” McConnell said, adding, “We have the tools and the institutions to resolve any issues. The president has every right to investigate the allegations and legally request a recount.”
The U.S. media widely predicted this past Saturday, November 7, that former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Biden had secured more than 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 U.S. presidential election. President Trump issued a statement, without admitting defeat, and stressed that he would continue to push for legal procedures to verify the results of the vote in several key states.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on congressional Republicans to condemn President Trump’s comments about election fraud and demanded that both parties should work to ensure a peaceful transition of new power on January 20 of next year in a speech on the floor of the House on Monday.
“First and foremost, former Vice President Biden will become the 46th president of the United States,” Schumer said in his House speech on Monday, adding, “The American people trust President-elect Biden to meet head-on the challenges we face: to ease their pain, to repair our democracy, to restore our economy. To rebuild our country and our planet for this generation and the next. Undoubtedly, these beliefs will be rewarded. But at the same time, undoubtedly, the task ahead is daunting.”
“Now, I must spend some time talking about something that will be of concern to all sectors over the next few weeks: the baseless allegations by the president and his supporters that the election was marred by widespread voter fraud and that this election was somehow rigged or stolen from President Trump,” said Schumer, who turned the conversation around to criticize Trump’s questions about the integrity of the election.
“This kind of rhetoric is very dangerous and very harmful to our democracy,” Schumer said.
Schumer emphasized that Biden won the election openly and honestly. He also cited former Republican President George W. Bush’s public congratulations to Biden and Harris as an example for the Republican Party to follow suit.
So far, however, only four Republican federal senators have publicly congratulated Biden, who the media predicted would be president-elect, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) of Utah, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) of Alaska, Sen. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) of Nebraska, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) of Maine.
Collins, who was successfully re-elected in this year’s congressional elections, is the senior moderate Republican member of Congress. She issued a statement Monday congratulating Biden on his election as the next president of the United States, making her the fourth Senate Republican to publicly recognize Biden as president-elect.
“I want to congratulate President-elect Biden on his victory, he loves this country and I wish him all the best,” Collins said in the statement.
Most congressional Republicans support President Trump’s pursuit of legal avenues over concerns about the election process and have not formally recognized Biden as president-elect.
Sen. Linsey Graham (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview with CNN on Monday that if Republicans continue to control the Senate, he would ask for a Senate investigation into the mail-in ballots.
“When we get back, I’ll tell McConnell that if we continue to control the Senate, we need to have a joint committee in the Senate to analyze the issue of mail-in ballots and its operation in 2020,” Graham said in an interview on the show.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also publicly voiced his support for President Trump’s pursuit of legal action over the election controversy on Twitter last Saturday.
“Democrats have filed challenges and lawsuits after multiple elections, just like any other candidate, and President Trump has every right to ask for a recount, challenge illegal votes, and take them to court if he has clear evidence of widespread misconduct or irregularities,” Rubio tweeted.
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