Trump held multiple calls with Pennsylvania House speaker on state’s electoral process

President Donald Trump spoke on multiple occasions over the past week with the speaker of the House in Pennsylvania about the Keystone State’s election results, inquiring about their electoral process, a spokesman for the lawmaker said.

The House speaker, Republican Bryan Cutler, did not view the calls as an attempt to pressure him to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state, his spokesman Mike Straub told CNN.

Trump “never directly pressured Cutler to overturn the results or seat rival electors — the conversations were briefings on the changes our state Supreme Court made to our state’s election law, the impact of those interventions, and what steps are being taken now to challenge those changes,” Straub said.

The Washington Post was first to report on Trump’s calls with Cutler.

The President has made similar inquiries with Republican officials in Michigan and Georgia as he has sought to overturn his election loss. Even as most states have certified their results, Trump has refused to accept the outcome — instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen and launching a legal effort to overturn results.

“We will still win it,” the President said in Georgia Saturday evening, even though there are no means for him to do so.

Earlier that day, Trump had called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, pushing him to convince state legislators to overturn Biden’s win in the state, a source familiar with the conversation told CNN.

Trump specifically asked Kemp to call a special session and convince state legislators to select their own electors who would support him, according to the source. He also asked the Republican governor to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures.

Kemp explained that he did not have the authority to order such an audit and denied the request to call a special session, the source said.

Still, Straub stressed Monday that the President’s Pennsylvania call centered on changes to the state’s election law, which “went through massive changes last year.”

“Cutler was very involved in writing, negotiating and passing a law that was ultimately signed into law by our Democratic Governor. That law was then very much changed by our state Supreme Court … in ways that have landed that law in court by several different parties, including Trump,” he said. “That was the subject of the discussions, no requests to do anything were made.”