ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) about why he can not accept the 2020 presidential race results, Sunday on “This Week.”
Stephanopoulos said, “As I said, Joe Biden’s victory has now been certified in states totaling 279 electoral votes. So do you now accept that he’s president-elect?”
Braun replied, “Well, we’ve got a process, and I think we have been going through it since the election, and it’s going to play itself out. I think that we’ve got a threshold coming on December 14th when the electoral college meets.”
He continued, “So whether we dismiss it reflexively, whether we would find widespread fraud, there’s a wide gulf in between. And I think that when you just say that there’s nothing there, you’re going to have half of the country uncertain about what just happened and disgruntled going into the future.”
Stephanopoulos said, “Sir, I think it’s hard to argue it’s been reflexively dismissed, and there have been audits and, in many cases, recounts. That’s been done in many states led by Republican governors, like in Arizona and Georgia. There have been more than 55 lawsuits brought forward by the president and his allies. Thirty-eight have been dismissed by judges. There have been investigations directed by the Justice Department, by the attorney general. The attorney general came back and said there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. So the process has played out, hasn’t it? And there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Why can’t you accept the results?”
Braun said, “I think it’s easy to say it’s played out because that might be the most convenient thing to say, but let’s look at what the secretary of state did not mention in Georgia. The video where, after a counting place closed, you see boxes of ballots coming out from underneath the table. I know that’s kind of a graphic example, but —”
Stephanopoulos interjected, “There wasn’t anything wrong shown in that video at all. So you’re just throwing out a claim out there that doesn’t prove what you are saying.”
Braun said, “All I can tell you is if you don’t at least give a perfunctory kind of investigation into it, whether it’s Dec. 14 and what happens beyond, you’re going to have a good part of the country — it’s over 50 percent — that view that something is amiss. And that’s going to carry forward in terms of undermining a democracy.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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