Ronna McDaniel defends call pressuring canvassers not to sign 2020 election certification

Ronna McDaniel, former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, defended on Sunday a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call in which she and then-President Donald Trump urged GOP canvassers in Michigan not to sign a certification of the 2020 election.

In December, The Detroit News exclusively reported the details of the call after reviewing recordings that were taken by a person present during the conversation, which featured McDaniel, Trump and the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.

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McDaniel appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning and provided her most expansive comments yet about the call. She didn't challenge the details that have been reported by The News. But her defense didn't fully align with the statements she made on the recordings.

"I support you voting your conscience," McDaniel said on Sunday of her message to the Wayne County canvassers.

"Our call that night was to say, 'Are you OK?'" McDaniel added at another point in her interview. "That's my recollection. It was three and a half years ago."

During a contentious meeting on Nov. 17, 2020, William Hartmann and Monica Palmer, the two GOP canvassers, initially voted to block the certification of the election in Wayne County. Then, later in the meeting, they changed course and supported certifying the election based on the condition that an audit take place of some precincts within Wayne County, which is a Democratic stronghold and Michigan's largest county.

After the meeting concluded, Hartmann and Palmer received the call from McDaniel and Trump, and they refused to sign the official certification paperwork that night. The following day, Hartmann and Palmer unsuccessfully attempted to rescind their votes in favor of certifying the election results, filing legal affidavits claiming they were pressured.

During the call, Trump told the two GOP Wayne County canvassers that they'd look "terrible" if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

"We've got to fight for our country," said Trump, according to the recordings. "We can't let these people take our country away from us." 

McDaniel, a Northville resident and the leader of the Republican Party nationally at that time, said at another point in the call, "If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. ... We will get you attorneys."

To which Trump added: "We'll take care of that."

McDaniel said on Sunday that she was "so glad" that "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker asked her about the phone call. McDaniel stepped down as Republican National Committee chairwoman on March 8 and has been hired to work as a paid contributor at NBC News, which produces and airs the longstanding Sunday talk show. Welker said the interview was "scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor" and that she wasn't involved in McDaniel being hired by the network.

McDaniel said during her interview that Hartmann and Palmer had been called "vicious names" and their family members were threatened.

"I did call them and say ... nobody should be threatened or bullied or pushed to change a vote," McDaniel told Welker.

Hartmann and Palmer had already voted to certify the election on the condition an audit take place when McDaniel and Trump talked to them.

During the Nov. 17, 2020, call, McDaniel said if Hartmann and Palmer certified the election without forcing an audit to occur, the public would "never know what happened in Detroit."

"How can anybody sign something when you have more votes than people?" Trump asked the canvassers, according to the recordings.

Detroit, which is located in Wayne County, had become a focus of Trump and his supporters' efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Michigan.

Democrat Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, 51%-48%. A series of court rulings, dozens of audits and an investigation by Republican lawmakers in the Michigan Senate have all upheld the result.

A woman was sentenced to a prison term in January for threatening Palmer.

During her interview Sunday, McDaniel never denied offering to provide lawyers to the Wayne County canvassers. Trump's campaign has also not challenged the details of the call that have been reported.

Hartmann died in 2021. Palmer has said she didn't remember what was stated on the phone call with McDaniel and Trump.

Sources allowed The News to review the recordings on the condition that they not be identified publicly for fear of retribution by the former president and his supporters.

McDaniel described Biden as the "legitimate president" in her interview Sunday.

But when asked if she regretted her call to the Wayne County canvassers, she replied, "I regret the fact that people are being threatened for doing their job."

cmauger@detroitnews.com