Michigan GOP House speaker says he hasn't confirmed Trump's White House invite

Kathryn Krawczyk
·2 min read

Michigan's Republican House speaker and Senate majority leader are due to arrive at the White House later today — but at least one of them is still undecided.

On Thursday, President Trump invited Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield to the White House in what is seemingly an attempt to stop them from certifying the state's presidential election results. Instead, Trump would seemingly like the GOP-held legislature to pick the state's election winner, invalidating President-elect Joe Biden's 150,000-vote lead there.

But as Michigan's Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson learned during a CNN appearance Thursday, at least Chatfield hadn't decided whether he'd show up or not, and let Benson know in a text.

Michigan's Democratic congressional delegation meanwhile sent a pointed message to Chatfield and Shirkey on Thursday, saying they were aiding a "last-minute attempt to overturn the results of the election" instead of focusing on COVID-19.

And in a Politico opinion article published Thursday, University of Michigan law professor Richard Primus warned that the meeting not only "threatens the system of democratic presidential elections," but also puts the legislators at risk of a criminal investigation.

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