PA GOP Leaders Condemn Trump's Claims Of Fraud

PENNSYLVANIA — Prominent Republican leaders in Pennsylvania are condemning President Donald Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud, saying his Thursday evening remarks were "very hard to watch" and "not substantiated."

As Trump's lead in Pennsylvania dwindled Thursday and disappeared Friday, he sought to sow doubt over the validity of the election with claims widely panned as baseless. During a press conference Thursday evening, the president doubled down on unfounded allegations of voter fraud.

Some networks, including MSNBC, cut away from the 20-minute news conference.

Afterward, leaders on both sides of the aisle in Pennsylvania condemned his words.

Among them was Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey. "I saw the president’s speech last night, and it was very hard to watch," Toomey said on the "Today Show" early Friday morning. "The president’s allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated."

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said Thursday there were no reports of voter fraud around the state on Election Day. The only incident occurred a few weeks ago when a man attempted to apply for a ballot for his dead mother.

Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, a Republican, told Fox News he had no evidence of "any misdoing" in the election.

Since midnight Wednesday, Twitter has flagged more than half of the president's 30 tweets, covering them behind a tag reading: "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process." Several of those tweets referenced Pennsylvania, a key battleground that could determine the final outcome of the race. He seemed specifically concerned that mail-in ballots, a subject of his ire for weeks now, were largely Democratic.

"They are working hard to make up 500,000 vote advantage in Pennsylvania disappear — ASAP. Likewise, Michigan and others!" he said Thursday afternoon on Twitter.

Biden overtook Trump in the ongoing ballot count early Friday. Biden now has 3,297,487 votes to Trump's 3,290,747, according to the Associated Press. There are still more than 100,000 mail-in ballots to be counted statewide, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.

While the president has offered no evidence to support his claims of fraud in his tweets or speeches, the Trump campaign's lawsuits in Pennsylvania and elsewhere elucidated two more cogent arguments: Observers from both parties should be allowed to watch the vote count, and the extension of the mail-in ballot deadline in Pennsylvania from Tuesday to Friday should never have been allowed.

Poll watchers were permitted to observe the count; the Trump campaign lawsuit sought for them to be at a closer distance.

While reiterating there was no fraud in Pennsylvania, Toomey — who endorsed Trump and said he voted for him — argued that both of those issues were giving fuel to Trump's claims.

"They (the Pennsylvania Supreme Court) rewrote the law, and they have no authority to do that," he said. "That's outrageous, frankly."

Other leading Republicans in Pennsylvania who have backed the president in the past concurred that is not fraud, but other behavior by Democrats has spurred suspicion.

"I don't have evidence of any misdoing," Corman told Fox News on Friday. "But all their actions (are) leading to wondering why they didn't want poll watchers. ... I ask everyone to be patient, allow the count to unfold, as Joe Biden said."

Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, said it was "dangerous" for the president to make such claims without evidence.

"No Republican elected official is going to stand behind that statement (of voter fraud)," Santorum said Friday on CNN. "They will stand behind elements of that statement ... there may be fraud, but we don't know that right now, and for the president to go out there right now and say that without any evidence of that is dangerous."

Santorum added Trump's comments Thursday were "at times incendiary. And not something that the president of the United States should say."