Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday applauded the reported resignation of a GOP Philadelphia election board member who defended the integrity of the 2020 presidential election after Trump lost Pennsylvania.
Al Schmidt, the lone Republican on Philadelphia’s election board, will resign in the coming weeks to take over as the next president and CEO of the good-government watchdog group The Committee of Seventy, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
One of the three seats on the election board is reserved for a member who is not part of the majority political party in Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1.
"Great news — RINO Al Schmidt, who was a disaster on the massive election fraud and irregularities which took place in Philadelphia, one of the most corrupt election places in the United States, is quitting. Going to a bad government group — I feel sorry for them — A really stupid hire!" Trump stated through his Save America website.
"Does anybody really think the election in Philly was legit?"
Schmidt, who is halfway through his third four-year term as a city commissioner, faced repeated attacks from Trump and other election skeptics after Trump lost the state. Republican officials in the city and state did little to come to his defense, the Inquirer reported.
Schmidt said in January his decision not to seek reelection as city commissioner had nothing to do with those attacks, suggesting it would "be like capitulating to the psychological terrorists," the Inquirer reported.
Schmidt testified at an October hearing before a Senate panel about threats made against the lives of his three young children after the 2020 election, the news outlet reported.
He said threats to elections officials in the state died down for a time but restarted when Republicans in charge of the state's general assembly in Harrisburg started pushing for "a bogus audit" of the presidential election.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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