Republicans fume over Dem threat of new impeachment articles: ‘Time to cut them off’

Republicans ratcheted up their accusations that Democrats are overplaying their impeachment hand after court filings from the House Judiciary Committee indicated the two articles of impeachment adopted last week may only be the beginning.
GOP lawmakers already were fuming at Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her surprise decision to delay transmitting the articles to the Senate in a bid to extract favorable terms for President Trump's trial. But in the latest twist, the Democrat-led Judiciary panel referenced the possibility of yet additional impeachment articles in briefs filed Monday related to their quest for testimony from former White House Counsel Don McGahn and secret grand jury material from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
If the court allows them to obtain the information they seek, their attorney wrote, "new articles of impeachment" could be considered based on the evidence. GOP lawmakers reacted with stunned disbelief.
"Democrats are treating impeachment as an open bar tab," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted Monday afternoon. "Time to cut them off, take their car keys away (put GOP in control of the House), and end this insanity."
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who sits on the House Judiciary Committee that filed the briefs, reacted by saying, "You've got to be kidding."
He added: "It’s gone from the Kangaroo Court Impeachment... ...to the Keystone Cops Impeachment(s).. Will Pelosi send the Articles from the last Impeachment before drafting the next ones?!"
The notion of new articles of impeachment was floated as the committee justified their need to have McGahn testify and acquire Mueller's secret grand jury information. Previously, they had argued that their ongoing impeachment investigation presented an urgent need for both -- but with the House already voting to impeach Trump, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals gave them until Monday afternoon to explain why the case was still relevant and should not be dismissed as moot.
"If this material reveals new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the Articles adopted by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly--including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment," committee attorney Douglas Letter wrote in the grand jury material case.
Letter used nearly identical language pertaining to McGahn's testimony in his brief in that case.
Trump last week was impeached on accusations of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, related to his efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch politically beneficial investigations, all while withholding military aid (though Trump has maintained there was no "quid pro quo").
The latest filings did not detail what potential additional articles could be considered. Regardless, the briefs stated that even if McGahn’s testimony or the grand jury material do not lead to new articles of impeachment, they could be used in an upcoming Senate trial in relation to the obstruction of Congress allegations that Trump is currently facing.

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White House predicts Pelosi will yield on impeachment delay

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is projecting confidence that it will prevail in a constitutional spat with Democrats over the nature of the Senate’s impeachment trial, which threatens to deprive President Donald Trump of the swift acquittal he seeks.

The House voted Wednesday to impeach Trump, who became only the third president in U.S. history to be formally charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Speaker Nancy Pelosi has delayed sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate until Republicans provide details on witnesses and testimony in hopes of shaping the upcoming trial. Democratic and Republican leaders in the chamber remain at an impasse over the question of whether witnesses will be called, but the White House believes Pelosi won’t be able to hold out much longer.

“She will yield. There’s no way she can hold this position,” Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said Sunday. “We think her case is going nowhere.’’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have been at an impasse over the issue of new testimony, leaving open the possibility of a protracted delay until the articles are delivered. Trump complained Saturday that the holdup was “unfair” and claimed that Democrats were violating the Constitution, as the delay threatened to prolong the pain of impeachment and cast uncertainty on the timing of the vote Trump is set to claim as vindication.

Schumer told reporters in New York that “the Senate is yearning to give President Trump due process, which means that documents and witnesses should come forward. What is a trial with no witnesses and no documents. It’s a sham trial.”

Short called Pelosi’s delay unacceptable, saying she’s “trampling” Trump’s rights to “rush this through, and now we’re going to hold it up to demand a longer process in the Senate with more witnesses.”

“If her case is so air-tight ... why does she need more witnesses to make her case?’’ Short said.

White House officials have highlighted Democrats’ arguments that removing Trump was an “urgent” matter before the House impeachment vote, as they seek to put pressure on Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

McConnell has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president, and he appears to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that established two weeks of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which then-minority Republicans called a limited number of witnesses.

That has sparked a fight with Pelosi and Schumer, who are demanding trial witnesses who refused to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

A close Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Pelosi would fail in her quest “to get Mitch McConnell to bend to her will to shape the trial.’’ Graham is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a House manager, comparable to a prosecutor, during the Senate’s impeachment trial of Clinton.

“She’ll eventually send the articles because public opinion will crush the Democrats,″ said Graham. Asked whether he expected witnesses in the Senate, he replied: : “No, I don’t.”

At one point, Trump had demanded the testimony of witnesses of his own, like Democrats Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and the intelligence community whistleblower whose summer complaint sparked the impeachment probe. But he has since relented after concerted lobbying by McConnell and other Senate Republicans who pushed him to accept the swift acquittal from the Senate and not to risk injecting uncertainty into the process by calling witnesses.

The Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said his party is looking for a signal from McConnell that he hasn’t ruled out new witnesses and documents. But Durbin acknowledged that Democrats may not have much leverage in pushing a deal.

He criticized both Republican and Democratic senators who have already announced how they will vote in the trial, saying the Constitution requires senators to act as impartial jurors. Republicans hold a 53-vote majority in the Senate.

“The leverage is our hope that four Republican senators will stand up, as 20 years ago, we saw in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and say, this is much bigger than our current political squabbles,” Durbin said.

The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict in an impeachment trial — and Republicans have expressed confidence that they have more than enough votes to keep Trump in office.

Short spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Durbin appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and Graham was on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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AP Radio Correspondent Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report.

GOP governors grapple with whether to accept refugees or not

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — An executive order by President Donald Trump giving states the right to refuse to take refugees is putting Republican governors in an uncomfortable position.

They’re caught between immigration hardliners who want to shut the door and some Christian evangelicals who believe helping refugees is a moral obligation. Others say refugees are vital to fill jobs and keep rural communities afloat.

More than 30 governors have agreed to accept refugees, but about a dozen Republican governors have stayed silent as they face a decision that must be made by Jan. 21 so resettlement agencies can secure federal funding in time to plan where to place refugees.

Trump’s executive order requires governors to publicly say they will accept refugees. They cannot automatically come to their states, even if cities and counties welcome them. So far, no one has opted to shut out refugees.

A North Dakota county voted this month to accept no more than 25 refugees next year, after initially signaling it would be the first to ban them.

Trump issued the order in September after slashing the number of refugees allowed into the United States in 2020 to a historic low of 18,000. The reduction is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration.

With his order, Trump again thrust states and local governments into immigration policy, willingly or not. It has caused heated debates and raucous meetings in several states, including North Dakota to Wisconsin.

Trump says his administration acted to respect communities that believe they do not have enough jobs to support refugees. Refugees can move anywhere in the U.S. after their initial resettlement at their own expense.

Republican governors in Nebraska, West Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Arizona, Iowa and Oklahoma have consented to accepting refugees in 2020. Vermont’s Republican governor said he intends to accepts refugees.

Others have not taken a public stance. They include the Republican governors of Georgia and Missouri, along with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, the state that took in the largest number of refugees this year.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the nation’s most populous state that resettles many refugees, also has not consented yet, but his office said he plans to do so.

In 2015, governors from 31 states — nearly all with Republican governors, including Abbott — tried to shut out Syrians, citing terrorism fears. But they didn’t have the legal authority at the time.

Now that they do, some governors have struggled with the decision.

Faith-based groups have led an aggressive campaign urging them to keep accepting refugees, while immigration hardliners have criticized Republicans who have not used their new authority to put the brakes on refugees coming into their states.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who tried to turn away Syrians in 2015, spent weeks reviewing his options.

He gave his consent Thursday in an open letter to Trump co-signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, praising the president for strengthening the vetting process.

“Thanks to your leadership, Americans can be confident once again in the screening process for refugees entering the United States,” the governors said in the letter.

Hatim Ido, a former U.S. Army translator and member of the persecuted Yazidi community who fled Iraq, was relieved to know Nebraska’s doors are still open. Ido hopes his two sisters in Iraq will be able to join him someday in Lincoln.

“I’m really concerned about them,” said Ido, a graduate student who became a U.S. citizen last year. “I understand (government officials) need to be very careful. I just wish there was a process in place so we could bring them here.”

Administration officials say refugee applicants are subject to the strictest, most comprehensive background checks for any group seeking to come to the U.S.

Fraud detection and national security officers now come overseas with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services teams who are processing refugees.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb made the distinction that opening the door to refugees does not mean he’s going soft on illegal immigration.

A federal judge last year permanently blocked Indiana from trying to turn away Syrians under an order that Vice President Mike Pence championed as governor.

“These are NOT illegal or unlawful immigrants but individuals who have gone through all the proper channels,” Holcomb wrote in his consent letter.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced his consent the same day this month that 300 evangelicals signed a letter urging him to keep letting refugees resettle “as an exercise of our Christian faith.”

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said faith leaders reached out to him, too.

“I appreciate Oklahoma churches who have assisted these individuals,” he wrote in his consent letter.

Tennessee’s consent did not sit well with legislative leaders who sued the federal government over the resettlement program.

“Our personal preference would have been to exercise the option to hit the pause button on accepting additional refugees in our state,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a joint statement.

Gov. Bill Lee, who talks often about his Christian faith, said he had to follow his heart.

“My commitment to these ideals is based on my faith, personally visiting refugee camps on multiple continents, and my years of experience ministering to refugees here in Tennessee,” he wrote in his consent letter.

More than 80 local governments have written letters welcoming refugees. Many are rural towns in conservative states that have come to rely on young refugees to revitalize their economies.

“We need workers, big time,” said Nebraska Sen. John McCollister, a Republican who is sometimes at odds with his party. Refugees “bring a lot of enthusiasm, and they’re some of our best entrepreneurs. They add a lot to the economy of Nebraska.”

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert asked for more refugees in a letter to Trump last month. The Republican said Utah has the resources and space and that welcoming refugees is part of the culture in a state where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found refuge generations ago.

“It’s been striking to see the breadth of bipartisan support for refugee resettlement in the states, with a number of governors writing very strong letters of support,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and a former official in the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which includes refugee resettlement. He left in 2017.

Holly Johnson, who coordinates the Tennessee Office for Refugees within the Catholic Charities, is not surprised. Employers are “chasing down resettlement agencies because they know refugees work hard,” she said.

Three resettlement groups have sued to block Trump’s order.

Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon does not plan to weigh in for now, his spokesman Michael Pearlman said, noting the state has not had a refugee resettlement program for decades.

GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Arkansas is determining which communities may be interested in accepting refugees, looking at financial costs and verifying security checks but that no final decision has been made.

“I am committed to ensure that refugees brought to Arkansas have a real chance to settle and become self-sufficient,” he said.

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Watson reported from San Diego. Anita Snow in Phoenix; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City; David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Ben Nadler in Atlanta; Anthony Izaguirre in Charleston, West Virginia; Paul Weber in Austin, Texas; and Don Thompson in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.

Evangelical tussling over anti-Trump editorial escalates

FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump listens to a question during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. As the political clamor caused by a top Christian magazine’s call to remove Trump from office continues to reverberate, more than 100 conservative evangelicals closed ranks further around Trump on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File))

As the political clamor caused by a top Christian magazine’s call to remove President Donald Trump from office continues to reverberate, more than 100 conservative evangelicals closed ranks further around Trump on Sunday.

In a letter to the president of Christianity Today magazine, the group of evangelicals chided Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli for penning an anti-Trump editorial, published Thursday, that they portrayed as a dig at their characters as well as the president’s.

“Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations,” the evangelicals wrote to the magazine’s president, Timothy Dalrymple.

The new offensive from the group of prominent evangelicals, including multiple members of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, signals a lingering awareness by the president’s backers that any meaningful crack in his longtime support from that segment of the Christian community could prove perilous for his reelection hopes. Though no groundswell of new anti-Trump sentiment emerged among evangelicals in the wake of Christianity Today’s editorial, the president fired off scathing tweets Friday accusing the establishment magazine – founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham in 1956 -- of becoming a captive of the left.

The letter to the magazine’s president sent on Sunday also included a veiled warning that Christianity Today could lose readership or advertising revenue as a result of the editorial, which cites Trump’s impeachment last week.

Citing Galli’s past characterization of himself as an “elite” evangelical, the letter’s authors told Dalrymple that “it’s up to your publication to decide whether or not your magazine intends to be a voice of evangelicals like those represented by the signatories below, and it is up to us and those Evangelicals like us to decide if we should subscribe to, advertise in and read your publication online and in print, but historically, we have been your readers.”

Among the signatories of the letter are George Wood, chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship; Rev. Tim Hill of the Church of God; former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee; and former Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Galli told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he views the chances of Trump leaving office, either through a reelection loss or post-impeachment conviction by the Senate, as “probably fairly slim at this point.” The editor-in-chief defended his editorial as less of a “political judgment” than a call for fellow evangelicals to examine their tolerance of Trump’s “moral character” in exchange for his embrace of conservative policies high on their agenda.

“We’re not looking for saints. We do have private sins, ongoing patterns of behavior that reveal themselves in our private life that we’re all trying to work on,” Galli said Sunday. “But a president has certain responsibilities as a public figure to display a certain level of public character and public morality.”

Galli referred comment on Sunday’s evangelical letter to Dalrymple, who on Sunday published his own strongly worded defense of the magazine’s anti-Trump commentary.

Countering Trump’s suggestion that the magazine had shifted to favor liberals, Dalrymple wrote that the publication is in fact “theologically conservative” and “does not endorse candidates.”

“Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness,” Dalrymple wrote.

Asked about the editorial’s indictment of Trump by “Fox News Sunday,” Marc Short – chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, himself a prominent evangelical Christian – cited some of the policy positions that have helped endear the president to many in that voting bloc.

“For a lot of us who are celebrating the birth of our Savior this week, the way that we look at it is that this president has helped to save thousands of similar unplanned pregnancies,” Short said Sunday, adding that “no president has been a greater ally to Israel than this president.”

Roughly 8 in 10 white evangelical Protestants say they approve of the way Trump is handling his job, according to a December poll from The AP-NORC Center.

The Trump campaign is planning a Jan. 3 event in Miami called “Evangelicals for Trump.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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This story has been corrected by deleting a reference to Samuel Rodriguez as among those who signed a letter Sunday, which he was not.

Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity Today editorial on Trump

Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity Today's editorial calling for the removal of President Trump, which “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations," they wrote to the magazine's president.
Christianity Today, one of the nation's top Christian magazine publications called for the removal of Trump on Thursday, one day after the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against him.
The letter to Timothy Dalrymple, the president of the magazine, also condemned the editorial for dismissing evangelicals who oppose its views as "far-right," the Christian Post reported.
“We are, in fact, not ‘far-right’ evangelicals as characterized by the author," the letter said. "Rather, we are Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our president has sought our advice as his administration has advanced policies that protect the unborn, promote religious freedom, reform our criminal justice system, contribute to strong working families through paid family leave, protect the freedom of conscience, prioritize parental rights, and ensure that our foreign policy aligns with our values while making our world safer, including through our support of the State of Israel.”
The letter continued: "We are not theocrats and we recognize that our imperfect political system is a reflection of the fallen world within which we live, reliant upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is freely given to sinner and saint, alike. We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners, and we take deeply our personal responsibility to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's — our public service."
The editorial has faced severe rebuke from many Trump supporters.
Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign, slammed the magazine in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner as being run by "pious 'Never Trumpers' who feel morally justified...in a self-serving desire to be proven right..."
The editorial was widely celebrated by the left and crashed its website.
"We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being," Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote in the editorial titled "Trump Should Be Removed From Office."  "That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle."
Galli defended the scathing editorial on Sunday.
He said in an interview with CBS’ “Face The Nation” that Trump’s support of causes important to the evangelical community can no longer excuse his actions in other areas and said the president is “morally unfit” to occupy the Oval Office.
“I am making a moral judgment that he is morally unfit or, even more precisely, it's his public morality that makes him unfit," Galli said.

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Trump adviser: Expect more aggressive poll watching in 2020

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — One of President Donald Trump’s top reelection advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states, according to an audio recording of a private event obtained by The Associated Press. The adviser said later that his remarks referred to frequent and false accusations that Republicans employ such tactics.

Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump’s reelection campaign, made the remarks on Nov. 21 as part of a wide-ranging discussion about strategies in the 2020 campaign, including more aggressive use of Election Day monitoring of polling places.

“Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” Clark said at the event. “Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are. ... Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”

Asked about the remarks by AP, Clark said he was referring to false accusations that the GOP engages in voter suppression.

“As should be clear from the context of my remarks, my point was that Republicans historically have been falsely accused of voter suppression and that it is time we stood up to defend our own voters,” Clark said. “Neither I nor anyone I know or work with would condone anyone’s vote being threatened or diluted and our efforts will be focused on preventing just that.”

Clark made the comments Nov. 21 in a meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association’s Wisconsin chapter. Attendees included the state Senate’s top Republican, Scott Fitzgerald, along with the executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Audio of the event at a country club in Madison obtained by the liberal group American Bridge was provided to AP by One Wisconsin Now, a Madison-based liberal advocacy group.

The roughly 20-minute audio offers an insider’s glimpse of Trump’s reelection strategy, showing the campaign focusing on voting locations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which form the the so-called “blue wall” of traditional Democratic strength that Trump broke through to win in 2016. Both parties are pouring millions of dollars into the states, anticipating they’ll be just as critical in the 2020 presidential contest.

Republican officials publicly signaled plans to step up their Election Day monitoring after a judge in 2018 lifted a consent decree in place since 1982 that barred the Republican National Committee from voter verification and other “ballot security” efforts. Critics have argued the tactics amount to voter intimidation.

The consent decree was put in place after the Democratic National Committee sued its Republican counterpart, alleging the RNC helped intimidate black voters in New Jersey’s election for governor. The federal lawsuit claimed the RNC and the state GOP had off-duty police stand at polling places in urban areas wearing armbands that read “National Ballot Security Task Force,” with guns visible on some.

Without acknowledging any wrongdoing, the RNC agreed to the consent decree, which restricted its ability to engage in activities related to ballot security. Lifting of the consent decree allows the RNC to “play by the same rules” as Democrats, said RNC communications director Michael Ahrens.

“Now the RNC can work more closely with state parties and campaigns to do what we do best, ensure that more people vote through our unmatched field program,” Ahrens said.

Although the consent decree forced the Trump campaign to conduct its own poll monitoring in 2016, the new rules will allow the RNC to use its multi-million dollar budget to handle those tasks and coordinate with other Republican groups on Election Day, Clark said.State directors of election day operations will be in place in Wisconsin and every battleground state by early 2020, he said.

In 2016, Wisconsin had 62 paid Trump staff working to get out the vote; in 2020, it will increase to around 100, Clark said.

Trump supports the effort, he said in the audio recording.

“We’ve all seen the tweets about voter fraud, blah, blah, blah,” Clark said. “Every time we’re in with him, he asks what are we doing about voter fraud? What are we doing about voter fraud?’ The point is he’s committed to this, he believes in it and he will do whatever it takes to make sure it’s successful.”

Clark said Trump’s campaign plans to focus on rural areas around mid-size cities like Eau Claire and Green Bay, areas he says where Democrats “cheat.” He did not explain what he meant by cheating and did not provide any examples.

“Cheating doesn’t just happen when you lose a county,” Clark said. “Cheating happens at the margin overall. What we’re going to be able to do, if we can recruit the bodies to do it, is focus on these places. That’s where our voters are.”

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin.

“If there’s bad behavior on the part of one side or the other to prevent people from voting, this is bad for our democracy,” Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said in reaction to Clark’s comments. “And frankly, I think will whoever does that, it will work to their disadvantage. It will make them look, frankly, stupid.”

Wisconsin’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, represented the Democratic National Committee in a 2016 New Jersey lawsuit that argued the GOP was coordinating with Trump to intimidate voters. Kaul argued then that Trump’s campaign “repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts” in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. The Republican Party disputed any coordination.

“It is vital that Wisconsinites have free and fair access to the polls, and that we protect the security and integrity of our elections,” Kaul said in a statement in reaction to Clark’s comments. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been and will continue working with other agencies to protect our democratic process.”

Mike Browne, deputy director of One Wisconsin Now, said Clark’s comments suggest the Trump campaign plans to engage in “underhanded tactics” to win the election.

“The strategy to rig the rules in elections and give themselves an unfair partisan advantage goes to Donald Trump, the highest levels of his campaign and the top Republican leadership,” Browne said. “It’s clear there’s no law Donald Trump and his right-wing machine won’t bend, break or ignore to try to win the presidency.”

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP