Nearly two weeks after the 2020 presidential election was called by every major news outlet, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah came the closest of any Republican lawmaker so far to displaying anything reminiscent of courage in response to Donald Trump's unfounded assault on American democracy.
"Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election," Romney said Thursday in a statement posted to Twitter. "It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President."
Romney was responding to news that Trump had invited the GOP leaders of the Michigan House and Senate to the White House Friday in an apparent effort to pressure them into overturning the state's election results, which favored Joe Biden by three points and more than 155,000 votes.
After either losing or withdrawing a handful of lawsuits in the state, Trump is now resorting to a rank pressure campaign to disenfranchise the nearly 3 million Michiganders who voted for Biden in the state. In support of Trump's bid, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani also held a simply incomprehensible press conference Thursday in which he unleashed a fusillade of conspiracies in such rapid succession that he appeared to literally begin melting down in front of the cameras.
GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska joined Romney in denouncing Trump’s effort, if not Trump himself.
"Wild press conferences erode public trust. So no, obviously Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute," Sasse said in a statement. "We are a nation of laws, not tweets."
Sasse also urged his constituents to scrutinize what Trump's lawyers are alleging in court versus what they are claiming publicly.
"Based on what I've read in their filings, when Trump campaign lawyers have stood before courts under oath, they have repeatedly refused to actually allege grand fraud—because there are legal consequences for lying to judges," Sasse said, adding that Trump’s attorneys have racked up a series of losses in Michigan's courts due to "being unable to produce any evidence."
Sasse and Romney are two of only a handful of Republican senators who have acknowledged Biden as the winner of the presidential contest and new president-elect.