Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
Sept. 30, 2021
By Joni Ashbrook
Former President Donald Trump attempted a variety of tactics to overturn the valid 2020 presidential election results. Luckily, there were a handful of Republicans who stood against his assault.
Brad Raffensperger
On Jan. 2, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. Trump demanded, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
Raffensperger didn’t buckle to Trump’s relentless pleas and veiled threat. After the call, Trump falsely tweeted that Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions” about his unfounded claims of fraud.
Raffensperger tweeted in response, “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.” Raffensperger is a Republican who publicly denounced Trump’s lies. He is definitively an endangered species in today’s spine deprived GOP.
The Washington Post obtained a recording of that call revealing Trump’s blatant abuse of power. Georgia has begun a criminal investigation into that call as well as other actions Trump allegedly took to influence the election outcome.
William Barr
While I am disgusted at how Trump’s former attorney general William Barr behaved as the president’s personal “fixer,” I am glad that Barr finally came to a bridge that was too far.
Barr resigned soon after Trump pressed him to find election fraud that Barr admitted “was all bulls–t.”
Jeffrey Rosen
Trump replaced Barr with Jeffrey Rosen who along with his colleagues deserves a barrel of thanks. In Senate testimony, Rosen said Trump was “persistent” in pressuring the Justice Department to discredit the 2020 election results.
Congress released handwritten notes from Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, who participated in calls between Trump and Rosen. The notes show Trump pressuring Rosen to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me” and Republican lawmakers.
Rosen refused Trump’s schemes, but an unscrupulous DOJ lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, was willing to implement them. Trump was about to fire Rosen and install Clark until a group of DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse if Rosen was fired.
The optics of a possible Nixon-stlye Saturday Night Massacre persuaded Trump to keep Rosen, thereby thwarting a Constitutional crisis.
Dan Quayle
President George H.W. Bush’s Vice President Dan Quayle will no longer be remembered only for misspelling “potato” while visiting an elementary school.
Quayle should be appreciated for persuading Vice President Mike Pence to refuse Trump’s demands to overturn the election results on Jan. 6.
A Trump lawyer even drafted an unconstitutional plan for Pence to throw out electors from seven states. According to the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Pence asked confidants if they thought he could do it.
Quayle was adamant, “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it.”
Mike Pence
Though Pence did seek ways to satisfy Trump’s unconstitutional quest to stay in office, he ultimately did certify the election results mere hours after the MAGA mob was chanting to “Hang Mike Pence!”
Trump sent the violent mob to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the certification process, and he directed their anger at his most loyal vice president by tweeting that Pence didn’t have “courage.”
There are others that defied Trump who deserve thanks. Unfortunately, many more Republicans are now quietly undermining our democracy by creating state laws that make it easier to cancel election results they dislike.
For example, in the Texas GOP’s early version of their “voting suppression” bill SB 7, they made it simpler for a judge to void election results without requiring evidence that fraud actually altered the outcome. Thankfully, Democrats pushed to remove that undemocratic provision.
Ashbrook is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. She is a retired school teacher and may be reached at [email protected].
