Trump responds to Detroit News report on him pressuring Wayne County election canvassers

Former President Donald Trump responded for the first time to a Detroit News report that revealed the existence of an audio recording that captured him directly pressuring Wayne County election officials on a telephone call not to certify the November 2020 election results.

Trump on Wednesday posted a Breitbart article covering the Detroit News report on his social media platform Truth Social. The Breitbart article focused on what pressure Democrats on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers placed on Republicans to certify the election after those canvassers originally voted no.

"They did what they say I did—Crazy!" Trump wrote Wednesday.

The News reported last week that Trump called then-Wayne County GOP canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann on Nov. 17, 2020, and told them they'd look "terrible" if they signed documents certifying the election results after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification, according to audio recordings.

The audio recordings, captured in four recordings by someone present for the conversation between Trump and the canvassers, revealed Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel was on the call with Trump and the canvassers and offered legal assistance for the Wayne County officials if they would not sign a document certifying the county's election results.

"If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. ... We will get you attorneys," McDaniel said, according to a recording reviewed by The News.

"We'll take care of that," Trump added.

Trump and McDaniel have not denied Trump tried to pressure Palmer and Hartmann to block certification of the election, or that they offered legal assistance to the two public officials in exchange for not signing the election certification. Palmer also did not dispute a summary of the call when contacted by The News; Hartmann died in 2021.

More:Trump recorded pressuring Wayne County canvassers not to certify 2020 vote

Trump's comment Wednesday references pressure Palmer and Hartmann faced after initially voting against certification of the election results, resulting in a deadlock that was decried by Democrats.

Jonathan Kinloch, one of the Democratic members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, said Trump is making a false equivalency between his actions and the actions of Democrats on the election board.

Kinloch told The News that the only pressure he put on Palmer and Hartmann was to remind them of their oath of office to follow election laws and procedures for certifying the election.

"That's the most ridiculous comparison that you could ever make," Kinloch said Wednesday. "What pressure could I put on them outside of the fact that they took an oath of office? That's what I focused on reminding them."

Kinloch added: "When I called them into the back room, my conversation with them went as follows: 'You cannot do this. We have never let political parties get involved with the work that we do.' ... I had a right and responsibility to speak reason to my colleagues to do their job."

During the Nov. 17, 2020, county canvassers meeting, Palmer and Hartmann raised concerns about out-of-balance tallies, where poll books recording votes don't match the final results.

The county canvassers certified the results after absentee ballot poll books at 70% of Detroit's 134 absentee counting boards were found to be out of balance without explanation. The mismatches varied anywhere from one to more than four votes.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan's election director, said in an affidavit that the difference in absentee ballots tabulated and names in poll books in Detroit was 150. There were "fewer ballots tabulated than names in the poll books," Brater added.

"If ballots had been illegally counted, there would be substantially more, not slightly fewer, ballots tabulated than names in the poll books," he said.

The out-of-balance precincts were "inconsequential" to an election Democrat Joe Biden won in Wayne County by 332,617 votes over Trump, Kinloch said. If the Wayne County Board of Canvassers had not certified the county's vote, it could have thrown Michigan's election results into chaos, said Kinloch, who also is a Wayne County commissioner from Detroit.

"He's the one who put pressure on them," Kinloch said of Trump.

In response to the report on the audio recordings, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said last week that Trump's actions "were taken in furtherance of his duty as president of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 presidential election."

Multiple legal experts and Republican political strategist Karl Rove have criticized Trump and McDaniel's actions. Some legal experts have questioned whether McDaniel's offer of attorneys to represent the canvassers in court for not carrying out their duties amounts to bribery.

"Offering an official something of value (services of a lawyer) in exchange for withholding official action (certifying the Wayne County vote) sounds like a classic case of bribery under Michigan state law," Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney from Alabama, wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

More:‘Election interference’? Trump's call with Wayne County canvassers fuels criticism

Rove said Trump and McDaniel's phone call to the canvassers amounted to "election interference" by the president and leader of the Republican Party.

"This is a problem," said Rove, who was an adviser to former President George W. Bush, a Republican, during an appearance Friday on Fox News. "The former president should not have been doing this.

"These people are supposedly independent officials who are supposed to certify the election based on their review of the process and the procedures in place, and he's attempting to get them to change their opinion after the fact."

clivengood@detroitnews.com

Staff Writers Craig Mauger and Melissa Burke contributed.