The Washington Post reports that President Donald Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp on Saturday morning urging him to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly to overturn the election results and order an audit of absentee ballot signatures.
Kemp declined Trump’s request to call a special session of the legislature, but tweeted his support for an audit of the ballot signatures, although the governor has no power to make the audit happen under state law.
Trump made the call ahead of a planned rally in Valdosta on Saturday evening on behalf of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two Republican senators who must win their runoff election on Jan. 5 or the U.S. Senate will flip to the Democrats. Kemp declined to attend Trump’s rally, citing the death of a young aide in a car accident in South Carolina.
Last week, Trump said during an interview with Fox News that he was “ashamed” that he had endorsed Kemp for governor in 2018.
On Dec. 4, the Trump Campaign filed another lawsuit in Georgia asking the court to “order a new election” and repeating baseless claims of mass voter fraud with “tens of thousands of illegal votes.”
Trump’s legal team has filed dozens of lawsuits in state’s that flipped in Biden’s favor, but courts have dismissed the claims as frivolous and lack of evidence. Two attorneys who support Trump – Lin Wood and Sidney Powell – filed suits in Georgia with unsubstantiated claims of an international conspiracy to steal the presidency from Trump using rigged voting machines. The courts have already dismissed the cases.
Wood, well known for representing Richard Jewell after he was accused of the 1996 Summer Olympic bombing, has encouraged Georgia Republicans not to vote for Perdue and Loeffler to send a message that the state’s voting system is flawed.
Kemp and other members of the GOP have urged their party to ignore Wood or risk losing all three branches of the government to Democrats.