Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania called President Trump‘s unsubstantiated suggestion that illegal votes were being counted in the presidential race “very disturbing” in an interview on “CBS This Morning” on Friday. “There is simply no evidence that anybody has shown me — or anyone else I’m aware of — of any kind of widespread corruption or fraud,” Toomey told co-host Anthony Mason.
The senator said he supported the Trump campaign’s efforts to get observers closer to election workers in Philadelphia as they count ballots. “That’s a real problem,” he said. “That should be fixed. That’s not right, but it’s not proof that there’s widespread fraud or theft.”
Asked by co-host Gayle King about Mr. Trump’s false claim that he had already won, Toomey said, “You can’t win an election until the votes have been counted, and so we’ve got to finish this process.”
Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that are still too close to call, but former Vice President Joe Biden took the lead in the Keystone State’s vote count Friday morning. Winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would put Biden above the 270 needed to win the presidency.
Toomey said he voted for Mr. Trump, but the senator said he wanted the next president “to be the person who legitimately wins the Electoral College, and I will accept whoever that is. That’s the way I think we need to approach this.”
The senator attributed the delay in reporting the state’s results to the “staggering” number of mail-in ballots submitted. “My hat is off to the folks, the poll workers, the election officials, the people counting ballots,” he said. “They’re working really hard, overwhelming majority of them with complete integrity doing the best they can.”
He called the state Supreme Court’s decision to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and delivered up to three days later unconstitutional and said those ballots may face legal challenges. Toomey said litigation was part of the election process, and he said the process should be allowed to play out.
“We should remain vigilant in case there is any wrongdoing,” he said. “That needs to be corrected, but, you know, we’ve got a process that works. Let’s finish it out.”
Meanwhile, Trump supporters have been protesting the vote count in Philadelphia, where police say they shut down an alleged plot by two men to attack the vote-counting center. CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan reports that authorities detained two men after receiving a tip about a group driving a Hummer from out of state with possible plans to attack the facility.
