Trump to seek to declare senators’ elections illegitimate years later
Two senators have hit back over reports Donald Trump will attempt to declare their elections illegitimate in a primetime address on Thursday.
Trump is expected to announce Georgia senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were elected illegitimately because of fraud, conservative news outlet the Washington Reporter said.
Donald Trump will reportedly seek to declare the 2020 election in Georgia illegitimate. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
The two Democrats were first elected to the Senate in 2020, in the same election in which Trump narrowly lost the state.
The US president will use the address to focus on the election in that state.
Although Trump would have lost the 2020 election by a substantial margin even without Georgia, he has fixated on the state as part of his false fraud claims.
Now both senators have hit back.
“Donald Trump’s spiral continues,” Ossoff said.
“The failed president, pocketing billions as he drives up prices, is afraid to lose the midterms.
“So he will reheat debunked election conspiracy theories and tell bizarre new lies to deny his 2020 defeat and attack voting rights.”
Jon Ossoff is a dark horse candidate for the 2028 presidency. AP
Ossoff is up for re-election this November, and polling shows him comfortably ahead of his Republican challenger.
“The president can spend every day litigating 2020 if he wants,” Warnock said.
“I’ll spend every day doing the job the people of Georgia elected me to do.”
Warnock was first elected in a special election in 2020, then re-elected in 2022 over Trump-endorsed candidate Herschel Walker, a former football star.
“In America, the people choose their leaders,” Warnock said.
“Not the other way around.”
Presidents have no power to remove senators.
Both Ossoff and Warnock are considered potential presidential candidates in 2028.
Rev. Raphael Warnock was the first black Democrat to be elected to a Senate seat in the South. AP
The president himself has not revealed what his speech tomorrow will be about.
Trump was criminally charged in 2023 over his efforts to meddle in the 2020 election in Georgia.
In the wake of his election defeat but while still in the Oval Office, Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn that state’s election results.
The conversation was surreptitiously recorded by Raffensperger’s office and then released to the media.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said.
“So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”
Donald Trump’s mugshot in Georgia after he was criminally charged. Fulton County Sheriff's Office
The case was dropped in 2025, when Trump was president again.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was removed by a state appeals court after it was revealed she was in a relationship with another prosecutor.
The prosecutor in charge of replacing Willis then appointed himself to the case, then dropped the charges.
Georgia has long been a solid conservative state, one of the biggest to consistently back Republicans.
But that changed in 2020, largely on the back of the massive growth of the city of Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs.
Now polling shows both Ossoff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms are leading ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Share a tip-off, video or photo with us
