When Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel helped former President Donald Trump pressure two Michigan election officials to not certify the 2020 election she did two things. First, she placed herself in legal jeopardy. Second, she confirmed the complete complicity of the Republican Party in Trump’s insurrectionist effort to overturn the vote.
According to The Detroit News, on Nov. 17, 2020, some two weeks after the election, Trump and McDaniel placed a phone call to two Wayne County Board of Canvassers members—Monica Palmer and William Hartmann—in which Trump told them they would look “terrible” if they signed the certification documents. Trump’s pitch appeared to be that they would look inconsistent after having voted in opposition to certification by then later voting to certify.
As he usually does, Trump exhorted the two Republicans, “We’ve got to fight for our country.” That’s not much different than his later urgings to the Jan. 6 rioters who would attack the Capitol seeking to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
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This is unsurprising behavior on Trump’s part given his request to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “just find 11,780 votes” so that Biden’s victory in Georgia could be overturned in Trump’s favor—but the timing in Michigan is particularly noteworthy.
This newly disclosed telephone call comes even earlier than what might be considered ever more desperate attempts by Trump in January, and it also shows just how early his overt personal interference began.
This call will be helpful evidence in the federal election interference case to show Trump’s state of mind and possibly establish new grounds for federal and state charges that would be more along the lines of bribery.
Here’s why: As part of that call, Trump assured the two Michigan election officials that lawyers would be provided for them, presumably to help defend them against investigation or even criminal charges of wrongdoing. While there isn’t anything illegal about paying someone else’s legal bill, there is something wrong when an offer to pay someone is to entice them to do something illegal. And that’s what it sounds like might have happened here.
Weeks after the election had taken place and with no legal pause on the certification process, Trump, the president of the United States, was taking the enormously unusual step of personally reaching down into the county level of state government to ask state officials to help him overturn or stop the election certification process.
And he had help. McDaniel was on the phone with him. The fact that the chair of the RNC and the president were asking two state-level Republican officials to arguably break the law is a stunning example of the degree of leverage brought to bear on the state officials.
McDaniel instructed the two officials—one of them, Hartmann, has since died—“If you can go home tonight and do not sign it… We will get you attorneys.” To which Trump added: “We’ll take care of that.” And it worked. Both officials did not sign the certification and the following day tried to withdraw their original votes to certify.
For McDaniel, it is legally significant that she is the one who brought up the idea of paying for lawyers. Her offer may have run afoul of the Michigan criminal bribery law, for as Professor Anthony Michael Kreis put it: “A promise was offered in exchange for an official act.”
Kreis also makes the point that this offer of something of value—the paid lawyers—goes a step further than Trump’s mere “browbeating” that he engaged in during his call with the Georgia secretary of state.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has already charged 16 defendants for their role in the so-called fake elector scheme, and these new revelations might bring McDaniel into Nessel’s charging universe as well.
This newly revealed evidence of the pressure and possible crimes committed by Trump and McDaniel are significant from a criminal justice standpoint. But they are also profound evidence of the decline of the Republican Party. It’s hard to imagine a greater illustration of the GOP’s complete submission to Trump than the RNC chairwoman getting on the phone with him to pressure state officials. It’s also a sad picture of just how complicit the Republican Party is with Trump’s effort to foment an insurrection against the Constitution and our democratic processes in order to keep himself in power.
