rejecting a court settlement (which he referred to as a consent decree) that dictated the procedures for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. And he was relentless.
In November alone, President Trump tweeted that Raffensperger was "a so-called Republican (RINO)" and asked "Where is @BrianKempGA,"[68] before suggesting that "They knew they were going to cheat."[69] He called to "Break the unconstitutional Consent Decree!"[70] and urged stricter signature matches with a demand to "Get it done! @BrianKempGA."[71] He called Kemp "hapless" and asked why he wouldn't use emergency powers to overrule Raffensperger on the signature-verification procedures, declaring that "Georgia Republicans are angry."[72] President Trump also retweeted posts asking, "Who needs Democrats when you have Republicans like Brian Kemp," and "why bother voting for Republicans if what you get is Ducey and Kemp?"[73]
Pennsylvania was an early, but not unique, example of how President Trump's State-pressure campaign affected the lives of the public servants running this country's elections.
On November 7th, Rudy Giuliani headlined a Philadelphia press conference in front of a landscaping business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, near a crematorium and down the street from a sex shop.[74]
Standing in front of former New York Police Commissioner and recently-pardoned convicted felon, Bernard Kerik, Giuliani gave opening remarks and handed the podium over to his first supposed eyewitness to election fraud, who turned out to be a convicted sex offender.[75] Giuliani claimed "at least 600,000 ballots are in question" in Pennsylvania and falsely suggested that large numbers of ballots in the State had been cast for dead people, including boxer Joe Frazier and actor Will Smith's father.[76]
Within days, Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt and others publicly debunked Giuliani's specific allegations of election fraud, including the claims about dead people voting in Pennsylvania elections.[77] In reaction, President Trump tweeted on the morning of November 11th that "[a] guy named Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia Commissioner and so-called Republican (RINO), is being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia. He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!"[78]
That statement targeting Schmidt led to a deluge of threatening and harassing phone calls and emails by people who heard President Trump and falsely held out hope that Schmidt or someone else could overturn the results of Pennsylvania's election.[79]
