US president Donald Trump doubled down on his false claims of election misconduct on Monday, a day after it emerged he pressured a senior election official in Georgia to "find" votes in order to change the presidential election result.
As Mr Trump headed to Georgia on Monday night for a campaign event ahead of Tuesday’s run-off Senate elections there, he pledged to produce “real numbers” to underline his claims of election fraud.
“How can you certify an election when the numbers being certified are verifiably WRONG,” he wrote on Twitter. But hours later, election officials in Georgia debunked Mr Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud.
Speaking at a press conference in Atlanta, Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state's office, accused Mr Trump of undermining Georgians' faith in the election system.
In a lengthy presentation, he rebutted several of the points made by the president about election fraud during Saturday's recorded phone call with Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. On the "ridiculous" claims about fraud involving Dominion voting machines, Mr Gabriel said: "None of that is true. Not a whit."
Similarly, he disputed allegations about signature-matching, while noting that all the tally sheets had been put online. “This office has been open and transparent,” he said.
Describing Mr Trump’s comments on the phone call with Mr Raffensperger as “not normal and out of place”, he said: “We have certified this election so there are no more votes to find.”
Earlier in the day, Mr Raffensperger suggested that a local district attorney office in Georgia could pursue a criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s efforts to change the election, though legal experts were divided on whether the president was likely to be indicted.
Divisions in GOP
The controversy over the phone call has erupted just days before members of Congress meet in a joint session to officially declare the election results. At least 12 Republican senators, and possibly more than 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives, are expected to object to the electoral vote tallies in some states when Congress meets on Wednesday.
Divisions have emerged within the Republican Party over the president's attempts to overturn November's election result.
While senators such as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley will force a debate on Wednesday when Congress convenes, several Republican senators plan to uphold the result. These include Utah's two senators Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, Ohio's Rob Portman and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Mr Cotton, a right-wing senator and strong supporter of Mr Trump, said he would not be supporting his colleagues’ efforts to subvert the election result, saying it would be an impingement on the constitutional right of states to declare their results.
Mr Trump hit out at Republicans’ reluctance to challenge Joe Biden’s victory, picking out Mr Cotton in particular.
“The ‘Surrender Caucus’ within the Republican party will go down in infamy as weak and ineffective ‘guardians’ of our Nation, who were willing to accept the certification of fraudulent presidential numbers!” he wrote on Twitter.
In a tweet directed at Mr Cotton by name, he said: “Republicans have pluses & minuses, but one thing is sure, THEY NEVER FORGET!”
Meanwhile, Washington's mayor, Muriel Bowser, has called in the National Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests planned in the city this week.
“We will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city,” she said, adding that a curfew may be imposed in the nation’s capital.
