By Jack Phillips
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said President Donald Trump met with several members of Congress on alleged voter fraud and will “fight back.”
“Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that they are “preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud. Stay tuned.”
Meadows, in his Monday night tweet, did not elaborate on who the members of Congress might be or their strategy.
Trump has not conceded the race and has said that fraud and irregularities cost him the election.
Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Jody Hice (R-Ga.) said they were part of the group that met with Trump.
“Just left the Oval with @realDonaldTrump and several other members of Congress. Stay tuned…” Gosar wrote in a tweet. Hice said he will lead an objection to Georgia’s electors during next month’s joint session of Congress.
In recent days, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and other House members have indicated they would challenge certain states’ Electoral College votes when they are read during the Jan. 6 session. Last week, the Republican parties in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada voted on their own slates of electors to preserve Trump’s ability to file lawsuits.
On Monday, Brooks told The Epoch Times that the “only thing that will get the congressmen and senators to do what is right for our country on this issue of voter fraud and election theft is active participation by American citizens who want honest and accurate elections.”
“Now, can American citizens actively participate? Very simply, they have to call their congressmen and their senators and demand that they support this effort to protect our election system from fraud and illegal conduct,” he said.
One member of the Senate and one member of the House are needed to challenge a state’s Electoral College votes. No senator has definitely confirmed they would challenge the votes, although Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have both suggested they might join Brooks and other GOP House representatives.
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged Democratic nominee Joe Biden as the winner several days ago, he also reportedly told senators not to challenge the counting of the Electoral College votes in January.
But Brooks said that McConnell’s comments aren’t relevant because it’s about alleged fraud and election integrity, not optics.
“Are members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate going to support or acquiesce to voter fraud and election theft or are they going to fight it, bearing in mind that our election system is the underpinning of our republic?” he asked. “If you do not have an honest and accurate election system, you have no Republic.”
And Paul, for his part, told a Senate Homeland Security hearing that he believes there was fraud committed during the Nov. 3 election.
“We can’t just say fraud didn’t happen,” Paul said. “We’re just going to ignore it? We’re going to sweep it under the rug?”
The Kentucky Republican also asserted that few courts and judges dismissed election-related lawsuits based on their merits—but rather, they were dismissed on procedural grounds.
“The courts have not decided the facts,” Paul said last Wednesday in the hearing. “The courts never looked at the facts. The courts don’t like elections, and they stayed out of it by finding an excuse.”
Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
