Michael Flynn calls pivotal Georgia elections ‘fake’ as ex-Trump adviser pushes voting fraud claims

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, dismissed the “fake” elections happening in Georgia next month as fellow Republicans focus their energy on the U.S. Senate races there.

Mr. Flynn, who alleges fraud occurred in last month’s presidential election, attacked the integrity of the upcoming Senate runoffs while appearing Thursday on the conservative-learning TV channel Newsmax.

“It’s a fake election. You can’t have another election on the same system,” Mr. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, said about next month’s high-stakes contests for Georgia’s two Senate seats.

Mr. Flynn, 61, subsequently proceeded to suggest the upcoming Senate contests are insecure because of connections he alleges to exist between the U.S. election infrastructure and other unspecified countries.

“It’s a broken system, and we cannot allow a system that is tied to foreign powers to be used to vote for the president or any election, any elected office, in our country,” Mr. Flynn added.

Mr. Flynn is among several allies of Mr. Trump to attack the integrity of the election process after the presidential race ended with his defeat, but none of their claims of purported fraud have panned out.

Federal officials involved in securing the nation’s election infrastructure and responding to potential voter fraud have said they have seen no evidence of activity that would alter the race’s outcome: Christopher Krebs, a former U.S. official tasked with ensuring the election occurred securely, has said the federal government succeeded in safeguarding the voting process and saw no foreign manipulation; William P. Barr, Mr. Barr’s outgoing attorney general, said the Department of Justice has not seen fraud on a scale that could have caused a different outcome in the election lost by Mr. Trump.

Nonetheless, Mr. Flynn has continued to make baseless allegations about the election since it ended with Mr. Trump losing to his Democratic rival, President-elect Joseph R. Biden. In addition to falsely claiming Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden in a “massive landslide,” Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017, has urged the president to deploy the military and “rerun” the election.

“I mean, the president has to plan for every eventuality, because we cannot allow this election and the integrity of our election to go the way it is,” Mr. Flynn said elsewhere during the Newsmax interview.

Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Georgia Republicans, are defending their seats in special runoff elections next month against Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively.

Republicans currently maintain control of the Senate by a slim margin, and the outcome of the Georgia runoff elections, ending Jan. 5, will determine which party has power when the 117th Congress convenes.

Indeed, Republican efforts to win those races have experienced complications on account of some conservatives alleging the presidential election was rigged and thus making their votes worthless.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman-elect known for spouting conspiracy theories, recently said Georgia Republicans should vote next month despite personally believing the White House race was fixed.

“No matter how upset we are, no matter how concerned we are about our elections, we have to turn out strong for our senators,” Ms. Greene said at a rally in Marietta for the two GOP incumbents last Friday.

Mr. Flynn left the Trump administration in early 2017 while under investigation and pleaded guilty later that year. He later asked to reverse course and, ultimately, was pardoned by the president last month.