Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on Tuesday chided President Donald Trump for his Florida recount rhetoric, saying he should “stop bullying, harassing and lying” about the process and let it proceed without his “tipping the scales of justice.”
In an unusual joint press conference, the New York Democrat and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida — down by more than 12,000 votes in the race against GOP Gov. Rick Scott ahead of the recount — urged Florida election officials to count every vote, The Hill reported.
“President Trump and Gov. Scott seem dead set against counting every vote. Why? Because they’re worried if every vote is counted, Bill Nelson will be reelected as senator from the great state of Florida,” Schumer said.
The president on Monday even called on Florida officials to call the election before a recount because ballots have become “massively infected by fraud,” though he’s provided no evidence of it.
If Trump wants a fair and honest election, Schumer argued, he “will stop bullying, harassing and lying about the vote in Florida and let the election precede without the heavy hand of the president tipping the scales of justice,” The Hill reported.
Nelson, for his part, accused Scott of “using his power as governor to try to undermine the voting process. He’s thrown around words like voter fraud, with no proof,” adding: “He’s tried to get the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to intimidate local supervisors of elections.”
The two senators took no questions, but a Democratic official said they believe a number of ballots discarded by machines in Democratic areas will help boost Nelson in a hand recount, Politico reported. Schumer said the state needs to blow past the Sunday deadline for a recount.
“Supervisors of the election should have all the time they need to count every Floridian’s ballot to make sure the candidate with the most votes is actually seated in January, even if the vote count has to go beyond Sunday,” he said, The Hill reported.
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