Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, told “Fox News @ Night” on Tuesday that the two Republicans on Michigan’s Wayne County Board of Canvassers involved in a brief deadlock in the county’s election certification process faced threats and allegations of racism before they agreed to certify the ballots.
Their decision to side with their Democrat colleagues was dramatic and viewed by conservatives on social media as a capitulation after a brutal, two-hour public pressure campaign.
Ellis told Shannon Bream, the host of the show, that she received reports that these two board members correctly spotted discrepancies and she said the ballot counts in 71% of the county’s precincts do not match voter rolls.
“That’s significant,” she said. “That doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. You should be concerned about it.”
Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s White House press secretary, announced earlier on Twitter that there were 234 pages of sworn affidavits that raised allegations of fraud in the county.
Critics said that the decision not to certify these votes was a direct affront on minority communities.
Ned Staebler, the chief executive of TechTown who, according to the New York Times, is a poll challenger at the T.C.F Center in the city, said in a viral Zoom meeting, “The Trump stain, the stain of racism that you, William Hartman and Monica Palmer, have covered yourself in, is going to follow you throughout history.”
He said the two would “forever be known in southeastern Michigan as two racists who did something so unprecedented that they disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Black voters in the city of Detroit.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s Democrat, said in an earlier statement, “In refusing to approve the results of the election in Wayne County, the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers have placed partisan politics above their legal duty to certify the election results.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D‑Mich., took to Twitter to blame the canvassers of putting “politics about their duty to our residents.”