Former President Trump says Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was wrong to say the Legislature couldn’t overturn 2020 election results even though the speaker for the first time claimed widespread fraud.
Trump, who has raised a series of baseless claims about Wisconsin’s election, said in a statement Thursday a vote should be “done quickly and easily” on a resolution that state Rep. Tim Ramthun, R-Campbellsport, introduced to decertify Wisconsin’s election results.
The Legislature’s nonpartisan lawyers have said there is no way legally to rescind the state’s electoral votes, which have already been counted for Joe Biden. Former Justice Michael Gableman, hired by the GOP Assembly, suggested a path to overturn the results in his latest report. But various legal experts have said it’s not possible.
During a WisPolitics.com luncheon in Madison Thursday, Gov. Tony Evers said he will continue to call out Vos for supporting the notion of widespread fraud in the election and for what Evers called a failure to lead.
“I think he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I think this is one of the dumbest things he’s ever said,” he said.
The Dem guv also knocked Vos for escalating his election concerns to widespread fraud after Vos has taken more pressure from various groups.
“He’s always talked about it in terms of a smaller issue, but now suddenly when he’s getting all this crap from other people he’s saying ‘there was widespread fraud and by golly I’d love to do something about it, but I can’t.’ That’s not leadership,” Evers said.
Outgoing Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, has said he would block any effort to take up Ramthun’s resolution. And the Assembly last month adjourned for the regular session.
“Our Country would not be in the mess it’s in if Republicans had the courage to act,” Trump said.
“Speaker Vos should do the right thing and correct the Crime of the Century — immediately!”
A Vos spokeswoman didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The statement was the latest example of Trump pressuring Wisconsin Republicans to overturn the election results. In June, he accused Vos and two other GOP legislative leaders of trying to prevent a forensic audit of the 2020 results and were “working hard to cover up election corruption.”
Two months later, Vos tweeted a picture of him flying on Trump’s plane to provide him details of the Gableman investigation. The speaker has since said he has spoken with Trump to update him on the investigation.
See Trump’s statement here.
