Toomey: ‘Completely unacceptable’ for Trump to pressure lawmakers to overturn election results

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said President Trump’s reported attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania were “completely unacceptable.”

“It’s completely unacceptable and it’s not going to work and the president should give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states,” Toomey told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Toomey added that he spoke on the phone with President-elect Joe Biden last week, saying “we had a very pleasant conversation” regarding potential areas of cooperation.

The Pennsylvania Republican, who has said he will not seek a third term in 2022, is one of under 30 GOP members in Congress who have gone on record to acknowledge Biden’s victory.

The Washington Post reported this week that Trump called Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler (R) and pressured him to appoint pro-Trump presidential electors.

Cutler’s office has said that he told Trump lawmakers do not have the power to override the results of the vote. However, the Speaker previously joined several other Republican lawmakers in asking Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to raise objections to the results after the Electoral College votes.

Although Toomey pushed back on Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, he also suggested Democrats’ allegations against the president, including his impeachment in 2019, had undermined faith in U.S. elections.

“A lot of Republicans across the commonwealth and across the country are sympathetic to some of the allegations being made by the president because they’ve witnessed the way he’s been treated for the last four years by the left and the press,” he said. “The accumulation of these outrageous attacks leads people to wonder, ‘Well, what wouldn’t they do?’ ”

Trump has repeatedly made evidence-free claims of election fraud before this year’s presidential contest, including in the 2016 GOP Iowa caucuses, that year’s presidential election and the 2017 Alabama special Senate election to replace then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.