Trump Pressures State Officials to Overturn Election Results

The Pressure Campaign

After losing the 2020 presidential election and failing in court, President Trump turned to a more direct approach: personally pressuring state officials in battleground states to refuse to certify results or to override the popular vote. The campaign targeted officials in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Wisconsin — all states Biden had won. Trump made personal phone calls, hosted meetings at the White House, and deployed allies to state capitols to lobby legislators to use their power to appoint alternative slates of electors.

Michigan

On November 19, Trump invited Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders — Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield — to the White House. The meeting took place as Michigan’s State Board of Canvassers was preparing to certify Biden’s victory in the state by more than 154,000 votes. Although Shirkey and Chatfield said after the meeting that they had seen no evidence that would change the outcome, the fact that a sitting president summoned state legislators to pressure them about an election result was without precedent in modern American history. Two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers had briefly refused to certify results before reversing course, claiming Trump had personally called them.

Georgia

Trump’s pressure on Georgia was particularly intense. He called Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, to push him to convene a special session of the state legislature to appoint Trump electors, overriding Biden’s win by roughly 12,000 votes. Kemp refused. Trump also attacked Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing to “find” votes to change the result. The state conducted multiple recounts and an audit, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory. Trump publicly berated both Kemp and Raffensperger, calling them traitors to the Republican Party.

The Broader Scheme

Beyond direct calls and meetings, Trump’s allies pursued a coordinated strategy to create alternative slates of electors in states Biden had won. This effort, which would later become a central focus of the January 6 congressional investigation and federal criminal charges, involved convincing Republican officials in seven states to sign documents falsely claiming to be the duly appointed electors for Trump. The fake electors scheme was conceived as a mechanism to give Vice President Mike Pence a pretext to reject legitimate electoral votes on January 6. The pressure campaign on state officials represented an escalation from legal challenges to direct attempts to subvert the democratic process.