White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with lawmakers from the Midwestern U.S. state of Michigan will not be an “advocacy meeting” and will not include campaign officials.Trump meets Friday at the White House with Michigan’s Republican state legislative leaders as his campaign continues to challenge Joe Biden’s November 3 presidential victory based on unfounded allegations of voter fraud.After failing repeatedly in court challenges throughout the country to undermine Biden’s victory by questioning the legality of the vote count, the president and his legal advisers are now reaching out directly to Republican state legislative leaders to see if they are willing to take steps to reverse the will of voters.“This is not an advocacy meeting,” McEnany said at a White House news conference hours before the meeting. “There will be no one from the campaign there. He routinely meets with lawmakers from all across the country.”Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who has worked feverishly to support Trump’s efforts, told Fox 5 New York that he would attend the meeting to “answer any questions.”The meeting is part of Trump’s extraordinary post-election campaign to block President-elect Biden’s victory in Michigan and in other battleground states and to reverse the results of the national election.Biden, a former vice president, unofficially won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes. The state, however, has not yet certified the results while Trump and his allies keep trying to convince judges and state legislators to exchange the statewide popular vote with Republican-chosen electors.The meeting was scheduled after Trump took the unusual step of personally calling two Wayne County, Michigan elections officials earlier this week who agreed to certify the results. But the officials said they later reconsidered their decision after speaking with Trump.Trump went further by inviting Republican state lawmakers from Michigan to the White House for talks as state elections officials prepare to confirm Biden as the winner.Wayne County, which includes Detroit, is Michigan’s most populous county and one that voted heavily for Biden.As Michigan’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey left Detroit for Washington on Friday, he was met by activists carrying signs with the slogan “Respect the Vote” and “Protect Democracy.”
Earlier this week, Shirkey said that Biden is the president-elect. Shirkey said that any attempt to award Michigan’s electoral votes to Trump is “not going to happen,” according to the news outlet Bridge Michigan.Michigan state House Speaker Lee Chatfield will also attend the meeting.
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