Trump and RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pressured Detroit officials not to certify 2020 vote: report

Former President Donald Trump and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tried to pressure Detroit election officials not to sign off on the certification of Michigan’s 2020 election results, according to a report. 

“We’ve got to fight for our country,” Trump reportedly told two officials with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers on Nov. 17, 2020, according to a recording reviewed by the Detroit News. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.” 

He also told the pair, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, that it would be a “terrible” look for them to sign off on the state’s election results after previously voting in opposition to certifying them during the call. The two Republican members of Wayne County’s canvassers board later voted to certify the 2020 vote results. 

McDaniel, who was also on the call, suggested that both Palmer and Hartmann would be offered legal representation, presumably by the RNC, if they decided not to sign the certification document.  

“If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys,” she reportedly said. 

“We’ll take care of that,” Trump added. 

Palmer and Hartmann did not sign the official statement of votes for Wayne County and tried unsuccessfully to rescind their votes supporting the certification of Michigan’s election results the day after the call. 

The call took place some 30 minutes after the end of a Nov. 17, 2020, meeting between the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, according to the Detroit News.  

Trump further claimed that Republicans had been “cheated on this election” and “everybody knows Detroit is crooked as hell.”

“How can anybody sign something when you have more votes than people?” the 77-year-old former president said on the call. 

McDaniel, a Michigan native and Wayne County resident argued that if the election were to be certified without an audit, voters would “never know what happened in Detroit.”

She told the Detroit News that Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory in the state “warranted an audit.” 

Both McDaniel and Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox formally requested an audit in a Nov. 21, 2020, letter to the Board of State Canvassers.

“What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time, as referenced in my letter on Nov. 21, 2020, is that there was ample evidence that warranted an audit,” McDaniel told the outlet.

Hartmann and Palmer both acknowledged in 2020 that they had received a call from Trump and McDaniel, and that the call took place as the pair sat in a parked car outside the Wayne County elections building. 

“The numbers have not improved, it is still 71% out of balance, stated Wayne County, Michigan, Canvassers,” Trump tweeted the morning after the call. “There is widespread irregularities in poll numbers. There are more votes than people. The two harassed patriot Canvassers refuse to sign the papers!”

Biden edged out Trump in Michigan by about 154,000 votes in 2020 – 50.6% to 47.8% – and easily defeated the incumbent in Wayne County by a 38 percentage point margin. 

Trump, the 2024 GOP presidential primary front-runner, was indicted in Georgia and by a federal grand jury earlier this year over his alleged efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.