Senate’s McConnell Says Trump Has Right To Probe Election ‘Irregularities’
The top Republican in the U.S. Congress on Monday said President Donald Trump was well within his rights to look into charges of “irregularities” in last week’s election, which has been called for Democrat Joe Biden…
The top Republican in the U.S. Congress on Monday said President Donald Trump was well within his rights to look into charges of “irregularities” in last week’s election, which has been called for Democrat Joe Biden, but did not offer any evidence of fraud.
Trump, a Republican, has yet to acknowledge defeat two days after Biden secured enough votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to win. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he backed Trump’s launch of a legal fight into claims of voter fraud.
“President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said.
McConnell spoke after four Senate Republicans, including a prominent Trump critic, acknowledged Biden’s victory. Before addressing the Senate, he met privately with Attorney General William Barr.
Trump has been saying for months before the Nov. 3 vote that he could lose only if fraudulent votes were cast. Experts say there is no evidence of significant fraud in U.S. elections.
In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell did not acknowledge Biden as president-elect or his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, as vice president-elect.
“Let’s not have any lectures,” McConnell continued. “No lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept the preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last one.”
Biden cleared the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency on Saturday after four days of ballot counting. Biden leads in two of the four states yet to be called, and is ahead by more than 4.4 million ballots in the popular vote.