On Tuesday Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) congratulated President-Elect Joe Biden on the US Senate floor.
McConnell has never been a huge supporter of President Trump or his grassroots supporters. But he has benefitted from President Trump’s popularity like every Republican in office today.
A 2019 report is making the rounds accusing McConnell of taking donations from voting machine lobbyists before blocking an election security bill that would burden the companies.
ES&S and Dominion are the two companies in question.
Now that’s interesting!
Mitch McConnell @senatemajldr Received Donations from Voting Machine Lobbyists Before Blocking Election Security Bills https://t.co/twZYwAaF9y
— Bernard B. Kerik (@BernardKerik) December 16, 2020
Newsweek reported:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell squashed two bills intended to ensure voting security on Thursday, just one day after former special counsel Robert Mueller warned that Russians were attempting to sabotage the 2020 presidential elections “as we sit here.”
McConnell said he wouldn’t allow a vote on the bills because they were “so partisan,” but, as previously reported, earlier this year McConnell received a slew of donations from four of the top voting machine lobbyists in the country.
“Clearly this request is not a serious effort to make a law. Clearly something so partisan that it only received one single solitary Republican vote in the House is not going to travel through the Senate by unanimous consent,” said McConnell on the Senate floor.
The plans would likely burden the two largest electronic voting machine vendors in the United States, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, with new regulations and financial burdens. Together, the companies make up about 80 percent of all voting machines used in the country and both have far-reaching lobbying arms in Washington D.C. Many of those lobbyists have contributed to the McConnell campaign, reported Sludge last month, an investigative outlet that focuses on money in politics.