In the second week of December 2020, the presidential election was decided and a formal vote in the Electoral College took place. Like President Trump, Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was unwilling to back down.
“Every illegal vote steals from a valid vote, and every state that conducted its elections fraudulently steals from states that conducted its elections fairly,” Ms. McDaniel told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Dec. 8.
By then, key campaign aides had already told Mr. Trump that he had lost. Consultants had found no credible evidence of fraud or irregularities that could have reversed the outcome. The Electoral College confirmed Joseph R. Biden was the winner six days later.
Still, Ms. McDaniel’s appearance on Mr. Hannity’s show was part of a concerted effort to help Mr. Trump come to terms with his election defeat.
Of the key figures involved in Mr. Trump’s attempt to retain power, Ms. McDaniel had received relatively little attention. She is only now facing intense scrutiny after NBC journalists expressed outrage over her network’s decision to hire her as an on-air contributor, which led to an abrupt end to her days-long relationship with the network.
Ms. McDaniel had recently tried to downplay her role. But a review of her record shows that she was at times closely involved in and supported Mr. Trump’s legal and political maneuvers before a violent attempt on Jan. 6 to stop Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.
Ms. McDaniel was not the most aggressive or outlandish member of Mr. Trump’s team. In fact, it fell short of Mr. Trump’s demands and expectations, former aides said, and faced calls from his allies and grassroots activists to take far more aggressive action. And their involvement appears to have declined significantly — at least publicly — in the days leading up to Jan. 6, as the RNC focused its efforts on the then-upcoming Senate runoff election in Georgia.
Later, after courts, Republican election officials and government investigations all rejected Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, Ms. McDaniel was seen as too uncommitted to the cause of overturning the election, particularly by Trump supporters who still viewed Mr. Trump as legitimate Winners considered.
But before that, Ms. McDaniel, who through intermediaries declined to comment for this article, had done more to challenge a legitimate election result than any other leader of a major American political party in modern history.
The beginnings: “This is theft”
In the days following the 2020 election, the RNC under Ms. McDaniel worked alongside the Trump campaign and his legal team to sway the outcome in Mr. Trump’s favor.
The party set up hotlines, collected reports of alleged suspicious activity and held meetings at the White House with Mr. Trump’s legal team. Ms. McDaniel later testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
At a news conference in Michigan on Nov. 6, a day before news outlets declared Mr. Biden the winner, she announced that the RNC was sending legal teams to four states to investigate “irregularities.” She listed allegations in Michigan that she said were indicators of potential, widespread problems, including supposedly suspicious voting machine software. The allegations were disputed by election officials and later debunked.
Speaking on Fox on November 10, Ms. McDaniel repeated baseless and soon-to-be-debunked claims about “deceased voters” and “a number of votes that were invalidated,” declaring, “This is theft.”
And on social media, Ms. McDaniel questioned “irregularities” surrounding the election, posted fundraising appeals and promoted hearings in states where Trump allies presented false evidence of election misconduct. She promised that the RNC would “follow this process to the end.”
After Mr. Trump changed his legal team and brought in outside lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the RNC also turned away from legal cooperation with the Trump team. Of the 65 lawsuits filed by Mr. Trump and his allies after the 2020 election, the RNC has only put its name on four, according to Democracy Docket, which tracks the cases.
Nevertheless, on November 19, Ms. McDaniel allowed Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell to hold a news conference at RNC headquarters. With a dark liquid dripping down his face, Mr. Giuliani spread wild theories about Dominion voting machines and the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.
Ms. McDaniel later told the Times that she regretted her decision. “When I saw some of the things Sidney said without evidence, I was definitely concerned that it was happening in my building,” she said.
After that press conference, the party’s lawyers urged Ms. McDaniel not to repeat the conspiracy theories about voting machines and urged RNC staffers to be careful when discussing the election, suggesting language like “voting irregularities.” ” instead of using “election fraud.” according to testimony from the House committee.
End of November: Intervention in Michigan
Behind the scenes, Ms. McDaniel has at times played a more direct role, including helping Mr. Trump in his attempt to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in Michigan.
On Nov. 17, two Republican members of the Board of Elections in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially voted against certifying the county’s results, stalling the board until they reversed themselves amid angry protests.
Immediately afterward, Republican board members Monica Palmer and William Hartmann received a call from Mr. Trump; Ms. McDaniel was also on the phone.
According to The Detroit News, which reviewed the audio recording of the call, Mr. Trump told the two that they would look “terrible” if they signed the formal papers to vote, adding: “We have to fight for our country.”
Ms McDaniel told them: “If you can go home tonight, don’t sign it,” adding: “We’ll get you lawyers.”
Since there was no legal way to revoke their votes, certification moved forward.
Speaking on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ms. McDaniel said she did not pressure the two and recalled simply urging them to “vote their conscience.” She deplored threats of violence against them – one of which resulted in an arrest in New Hampshire – and said the two officials had the right to demand further audits of county results. (The results were confirmed by a post-election audit.)
A challenge to the Supreme Court
Ms. McDaniel also helped Mr. Trump lobby the state’s attorneys general to join a Supreme Court lawsuit originally filed by the state of Texas to challenge results in four states. Viewed as outlandish by legal experts, it sought to have the court throw out virtually all votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by leaving the results up to their Republican legislatures.
Ms. McDaniel was a supporter of the bid. “I’m so excited about this lawsuit in Texas,” she told Mr. Hannity on Fox, adding, “There will be more states joining this lawsuit.”
In the background, she accompanied Mr. Trump on a phone call in which he urged Arkansas Republican Party Chairwoman Jonelle Fulmer to bring the state’s attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, on board. “The president asked me to tell our attorney general that he wanted her to join this lawsuit, and she did so immediately,” Ms. Fulmer told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which first reported the call.
The Supreme Court rejected Texas’ lawsuit a few days later.
The voters
But Ms. McDaniel continued to support the overall effort to overturn the results. In December 2020, she had a telephone conversation with Mr. Trump and John Eastman, a law professor who supported the effort, to discuss the plan to use alternative electors to make Mr. Trump the winner. Ms. McDaniel agreed to work with the Trump campaign to implement the plan, but she was told it was only an emergency in case Republican lawsuits invalidated the results, she said in her testimony.
A federal indictment against Mr. Trump filed by special counsel Jack Smith also alleged that Ms. McDaniel was deceived into believing that electors would not be used if the campaign was unsuccessful in court.
Mr. Trump’s plans included pushing through electors on Jan. 6 anyway, with help from Vice President Mike Pence, who the president and his allies hoped would block the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.
Ms. McDaniel also testified that she was “out of the loop” about plans to pressure Mr. Pence.
On the evening of January 6, she decried the riots at the Capitol, saying in a statement: “What these violent protesters are doing is the opposite of patriotism. “It is shameful and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”
In the months after Mr. Biden’s inauguration, Ms. McDaniel oversaw a huge expansion of the party’s “election integrity” teams, state-run groups that often worked with activists who were still spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election.
In an interview on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ms. McDaniel admitted: “He won fair and square.”
But she added: “I think it’s fair to say there were problems in 2020.”
Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
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2024-03-28 03:15:44
www.nytimes.com
