As his already long prospects for overturning the election results have grown even more remote, President Donald Trump has amplified pressure on state Republicans to hit the brakes on certifying Joe Biden’s win.
Now, a robocall campaign has been launched targeting the top Republican in Pennsylvania’s state legislature over his refusal to help overturn Biden’s victory in the state last month. And it’s a mystery who is behind it.
In the calls, a man who identifies himself only as “Rob” accuses statehouse Speaker Bryan Cutler of “siding with the Democrats that have been cheating us out of a fair election.” “Rob” asks recipients of the call to “stand with President Trump and against Speaker Cutler and the rest of those weak-kneed Republican leaders in the Pennsylvania House.”
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The robocall campaign began around the time that Trump was reportedly leaning on Cutler to back his efforts to nullify Pennsylvania’s presidential election results by using the state legislature to appoint presidential electors who support Trump. Cutler informed the president in a pair of phone calls last week that he does not have the authority to do so, the speaker’s spokesperson told The Washington Post.
The Trump campaign’s legal team, which has tried to overturn the Pennsylvania results in court, has railed against Republican state lawmakers over their refusal to acquiesce to the president’s requests. “I’m ashamed of them,” tweeted Rudy Giuliani. Jenna Ellis, another campaign attorney, retweeted an attack on statehouse Republicans as “liars, cowards, and traitors.”
The anti-Cutler robocalls have struck a similar note. At least two versions of the calls have gone out since last week, according to dated audio clips on the website Nomorobo, most from numbers with area codes corresponding to the cities of Harrisburg, the state capital, and Lancaster, which Cutler represents in the legislature. The speaker “just embarrassed Lancaster in front of the whole nation,” one of the calls declares.
Cutler’s office told The Daily Beast that they’re not only aware of the calls but that they’ve even received some of them in the speaker’s office in the Capitol. Spokesperson Michael Straub said their caller-ID service listed the caller as “Stop Cutler,” but that they don’t have any other information on who’s behind the effort.
Others who reported receiving the robocalls said their caller IDs identified the caller as “Save America.” That happens to be the name of a new political group formed by President Trump last month, though there are no other indications of Team Trump’s involvement. His campaign did not respond to inquiries about the robocalls.
In a recording of one of the calls provided by the service RoboKiller, “Rob” says that the calls were paid for by a group called the Voter Integrity Fund. That’s the name of an organization seeking to unearth voter fraud in the 2020 election. But Matt Braynard, the Trump campaign alum who runs the group, told The Daily Beast that his group has nothing to do with the anti-Cutler robocalls.
If you’ve received a call from “Rob” or have information about the provenance of these robocalls, please drop us a line about it. The author can be reached at lachlan.markay@thedailybeast.com.
