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- President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results may not be going well on the legal front, but a high-ranking Pennsylvania Republican leader is feeling the pressure.
- State Sen. Kim Ward, the Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate majority leader, told The New York Times not only that Trump called her, but that she feels a looming threat from his most fervent supporters.
- “If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight,” Ward said of a letter calling on state lawmakers to pressure Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to make their own electoral college picks so Trump could take President-elect Joe Biden’s victory from him.
- Trump is running out of options, with the Supreme Court passing on a challenge to Pennsylvania’s results and his campaign’s legal team unable to win any of the 38 lawsuits they’ve filed since Election Day.
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President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election have reached a fever pitch among the state lawmakers he’s been pressuring, according to the Pennsylvania Senate’s Republican majority leader.
State Sen. Kim Ward, whose district includes much of Westmoreland County just to the east of Pittsburgh, told The New York Times that Trump called her recently.
Beyond Trump pushing her to help put the Keystone State’s 20 electoral votes into his column more than a month after Election Day, Ward said the president’s efforts could be putting her in danger.
Ward’s leadership position is key to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election, mainly by calling on GOP-controlled state legislatures to make their own picks for the electoral college so the president could carry the state, effectively nullifying the will of the people.
The legal precedent for such a maneuver has not been on Trump’s side, and most GOP state house leaders in key battleground states have not acquiesced to his demands so far. Furthermore, time has effectively run out for the Trump campaign since the “safe harbor” deadline for states to certify their election results was on Tuesday.
However, Ward pointed to the overall mood among Trump's base as a more pressing issue.
She told The Times that were she to come out and say she would not sign a letter drafted by Republicans in the lower chamber - which calls for Pennsylvania's congressional delegation to reject the state's electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden - she would face the wrath of Trump's most fervent supporters.
"If I would say to you, 'I don't want to do it,' I'd get my house bombed tonight," Ward said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in mid-November found that 68% of Republicans say they believe the election was rigged.
The Times reports Pennsylvania is one of three states where Trump has made calls to state lawmakers in the aftermath of the election. The others were reportedly Michigan and Georgia.
Trump has run out of options to take Biden's win away, with the Supreme Court refusing to hear a challenge to overturn Pennsylvania's results on Tuesday.
Elsewhere in court, the Trump campaign's legal team has been unable to win any of the 38 lawsuits they've filed since Election Day.