Trump demands names of Congressional Republicans who have acknowledged Biden’s election victory

‘I am surprised there are so many. We have just begun to fight’

Donald Trump demanded the names of the 27 Republican Congressional Republicans who have acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

In a Washington Post survey of all 249 Congressional Republicans that was published on Saturday, just 27 recognised Mr Biden as the President-elect.

The vast majority failed to respond to the newspaper, while two GOP congressmen, Alabama representative Mo Brooks and Arizona congressman Paul Gosar, falsely claimed Mr Trump had won.

The two congressmen said that they will not accept Mr Biden as the president, regardless of what happens when state electors officially cast their ballots on 14 December.

Mr Brooks said that “in my judgement, this is the worst election theft in the history of the United States”, while Mr Gosar falsely claimed that there is “too much evidence of fraud”, according to Common Dreams.

Although Mr Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election last month, Mr Trump has yet to concede, despite officially launching the transition process.

The president and his campaign team have filed around 40 unsuccessful lawsuits in battleground states that Mr Biden won. The Trump team has so far provided no definitive evidence of any voting irregularities.

Responding to the survey on Saturday evening, when the Post only had 25 acknowledgements of Mr Biden’s victory, President Trump demanded the names of the Republican representatives.

“25, wow! I am surprised there are so many. We have just begun to fight. Please send me a list of the 25 RINOS [Republicans in name only],” he tweeted.

Mr Trump and his supporters have repeatedly used the term RINOs to describe GOP officials they do not agree with.

Although the names of the 27 Republican officials are listed in the Post’s survey, Mr Trump added that he reads “the Fake News Washington Post as little as possible!”

The Post’s survey also found that 32 congressional Republicans said that they would accept Mr Biden’s victory if he won the Electoral College majority, while 212 did not respond. Mr Biden officially won the majority yesterday after California certified its results.

Nine Republican officials, including Texas senator Ted Cruz and South Carolina official Lindsey Graham, told the Post that they support Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result.

While, eight GOP officials, including Utah senator Mitt Romney and Alaska official Lisa Murkowski, said that they do not support President Trump’s efforts. 232 more did not reply.

The survey was released just a few days after US attorney general William Barr, a close Trump ally, said that the US Department of Justice had found no evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, as the president runs out of time to back up his baseless claims.

Mr Barr told the Associated Press that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

This article was amended on December 14, 2020, to correct the names of the states represented by Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski.

However, President Trump continued to falsely claim that there was widespread fraud in the election at a rally in Georgia on Saturday, in support of senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue ahead of their Senate runoff elections on 5 January.

Mr Trump spoke for 90 minutes and made numerous false claims about the result of last month’s national election, before he eventually invited Ms Loeffler and Mr Perdue on stage.

Despite the event being billed as a rally for the senators, Mr Trump mainly spoke about his legal fight to overturn the presidential election result, and claimed that if he thought he had lost, then he would be “a very gracious loser”, and added: “I’d go to Florida … I’d take it easy.”

Mr Biden won the presidential election by 306 to 232 electoral college votes, and received 7 million more ballots nationally than Mr Trump.