Mitch McConnell apparently spoke with Bill Barr in the weeks following Election Day 2020 to urge him to publicly speak out on the conspiracies and false claims Donald Trump had been spouting.

This new detail comes as part of a new report from ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, who is writing a book Betrayal on the final days of the Trump presidency. Barr spoke to Karl and said of Trump’s big lie, “It was all bullshit.”

McConnell officially congratulated Joe Biden for winning the election on December 15th, after the Electoral College voted to officially certify the results. Trump raged at him on Twitter as a result.

Barr told Karl that McConnell had apparently “been urging him to speak out since mid-November,” and Karl reported that McConnell confirmed the account Barr provided.

And one key thing that concerned the then-Senate Majority Leader was the potential impact on the Georgia runoff elections on January 5th:

To McConnell, the road to maintaining control of the Senate was simple: Republicans needed to make the argument that with Biden soon to be in the White House, it was crucial that they have a majority in the Senate to check his power. But McConnell also believed that if he openly declared Biden the winner, Trump would be enraged and likely act to sabotage the Republican Senate campaigns in Georgia. Barr related his conversations with McConnell to me. McConnell confirms the account.

“Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell told Barr, “and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”

Politico reported in January that McConnell “was pleading” with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about how much Trump’s “wild conspiracy theories” were hurting their chances in Georgia.

That Politico report said senior Republicans consider what Trump did a “major” part of why they lost in Georgia. Trump has publicly blamed McConnell, as well as Georgia Republican officials he was attacking.

The post McConnell Reportedly Urged Bill Barr to Speak Out on Trump’s False Election Claims Amid Concerns About Georgia Runoffs first appeared on Mediaite.

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