Days after President Joe Biden took office and Democrats took control of the US Senate, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., I would not say unambiguously on Sunday that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen and called for an investigation of fraud without providing evidence.
“The debate about whether or not fraud should occur, we never had any presentation in court where we actually saw the evidence. Most of the cases were dismissed for lack of legitimacy, which is a procedural way of not really hearing the question, “said Paul on ABC’s” This Week “program.
“Senator Paul, I have to stop him there,” interrupted ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“No election is perfect,” continued Stephanopoulos, through Paul’s interruptions. “After investigations, counts and recounts, the Justice Department – led by (attorney-general appointed by Trump) William Barr – said there was no widespread evidence of fraud. You can’t just say the words: ‘This election has not been stolen ? ‘”
Paul replied, “What I would suggest is that if we want more confidence in our elections – and 75% of Republicans agree with me – it is that we need to look at electoral integrity.”
He also did not recognize the role of former President Donald Trump in sowing doubts about the election.
Most of the lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign were dismissed for lack of evidence. Across the country, secretaries of state, both Republicans and Democrats, and federal officials – including Barr – said there was no evidence of widespread fraud or security concerns in the November election.
When asked by Stephanopoulos about Barr’s denial of widespread fraud, Paul stepped back.
“He said that, yes. That was a statement. There was no examination – full examination – of all the states to see what problems we had and to see if they could solve them,” he said.
“There were a lot of problems and there were secretaries of state who changed the law illegally and this needs to be fixed, and I will work harder to fix it and I will not be intimidated by people who say ‘oh, you’ are a liar,” “Paul told Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos replied: “I am defending the facts. There are no two sides to the facts. I did not say it was a perfect election, I said the results were certified, I said they were not stolen. It is a lie.”
Although Paul was one of many Republican politicians who repeated Trump’s baseless allegations of electoral fraud, the Kentucky senator did not object to the electoral college’s certification and said earlier that he thinks Congress should not overturn the results.
“Now, let me say to be clear, I voted to certify state voters because I think it would be wrong for Congress to overturn this,” he said.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Responded to Paul’s comments in a separate interview on “This Week”.
“As I listened to Rand Paul, George, I was like, ‘man, that’s why Joe Biden won,'” she told Stephanopoulos.
“Americans are fighting now. They need relief from the pandemic,” continued Klobuchar. “I firmly believe that we can deal with this impeachment trial and – just as the American people are doing – reconcile what we need to do.
With less than a week since Biden’s inauguration, the impeachment article against Trump is due to be delivered to the Senate on Monday and the trial is scheduled to begin the week of February 8. Senate Democrats are trying to balance the next few procedures with getting more choices from the Biden Cabinet passed and moving forward on the president’s legislative agenda.
Despite previous reports that McConnell was satisfied with the House of Representatives’ impeachment efforts, an increasing number of conservative and Republican jurists in the Senate questioned the constitutionality of holding a trial for Trump, since he is no longer in office.
Some senators, including Paul, have argued that if court president John Roberts does not preside over the impeachment trial – which is still unclear – the hearings would be illegitimate.
When asked by Stephanopoulos about the arguments of the case, Klobuchar said: “It is constitutional. We have precedents for when a Secretary of War was tried after leaving office and, obviously, there is a remedy that would help in the future that would prohibit the former president. Trump to run again. “
With more Republicans publicizing the lack of a constitutional basis for the trial, Stephanopoulos also pressured Klobuchar about whether there were enough Republican senators to vote for Trump’s sentencing.
“My colleagues have yet to commit to what they are going to do and the news that we just left The New York Times yesterday that the president was really trying to take his own attorney general and have an unknown bureaucrat conspiring with I think we will have more and more evidence in the coming weeks, as if it wasn’t enough that he sent a furious crowd to the Mall to invade the Capitol – I didn’t try to stop him – and a police officer was killed. I really don’t know what else you need to know, ”added the senator from Minnesota.
“Would you instead seek censorship or some kind of resolution under the 14th Amendment to prevent President Trump from running for office again?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Klobuchar refused to discard anything.
“We are focused on impeachment, but there are many options. Things can be analyzed. But I think what your viewers need to know now, George, is that we must do a lot of things at the same time, ”she said.
While the Senate debates the impending impeachment trial, also critical on the Democrats’ agenda is passing a new coronavirus relief bill – a key component of Biden’s legislative priorities. The president is still pushing for a bipartisan deal, despite the fact that many in the Republican Party – including moderates like Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine – said the overall $ 1.9 trillion price is too expensive.
Klobuchar rebutted the arguments about the size of the project, saying that “the value that Joe Biden proposed is exactly the numbers we were talking about last summer. And at some point, the government (Trump) was talking about those numbers.”
Meg Cunningham and Kelly McCoy of ABC News contributed to this report.