Anti-Corruption Group Warns that Trump is Attempting a Coup

All 83 Michigan counties have certified their election results but President Donald Trump has not accepted the result.

Now the celebrity-backed anti-corruption group RepresentUs has taken a full-page ad in the Detroit Free Press warning that the president's actions amount to a coup attempt.

“The President of the United States is staging a coup," the ad says. "He is pressuring swing state lawmakers to throw away the election results, ignore the will of the people and declare him the winner...”

RepresentUs, which calls itself the nation’s leading nonpartisan democracy organization and includes leading Hollywood figures including Jennifer Laawrence, Kerry Washington and Jack Black, says Michigan state legislators face a dire choice between democracy and dictatorship.

The ad points to President Trump’s attempt to overturn election results based on false allegations of election fraud.

After failing in his legal efforts, he contacted election officials in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin asking them to block certification of ballots. The Michigan officials were invited to the White House, but say they will not change their votes.

If this illegal seizure of power were happening in any other country, we would call it what it is: an attempted coup d’etat

Activists fear that running out the clock could enable the state legislature to send alternate electors, a path that threatens to overturn the will of the people.

“America needs to wake up, right now, RepresentUs CEO and Co-Founder Josh Silver says:

"The President is causing serious damage that will take years to undo. If the leader of another country was trying to steal an election, we’d call it a coup.

That’s exactly what we should be calling it here in the US. It’s imperative that Michigan and other states certify the results, which have been upheld by audits and the courts."

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Michigan's 83 counties have all certified

All 83 counties in Michigan have certified the election. The President’s tactics threaten to disrupt the November 23 statewide certification of the election by the Board of Canvassers.

“We thought American democracy was made of brick and mortar, and resistant to attacks from would-be authoritarians like President Trump. He is showing us that it is not. It is fragile. It needs to be defended, and after this tsunami of an administration passes, and it needs to be rebuilt and reinforced, in case another storm hits our nation” concluded Silver.

RepresentUs is mobilizing members across the country to contact their state officials and demand they certify the election results.