Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday dismissed concerns about threats to democracy shortly after new polling showed that Americans are worried about the issue.
“I think we have a very solid democracy. I don’t think of the things that we need to worry about, I wouldn’t be worried about that one,” McConnell told reporters, according to NBC News.
McConnell added that there is “very little election fraud” but it “happens occasionally.”
The Kentucky Republican also said that efforts to intervene in the 2020 transfer of power may have influenced responses in the survey, the network noted.
“There were those who were trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power for the first time in American history,” he said referring to events in the wake of the 2020 election, adding “that was not good.”
A plurality of respondents in an NBC News poll released over the weekend — 21 percent — ranked threats to democracy as the top issue facing the country.
The survey also found that more than half of registered voters think investigations into alleged wrongdoings of former President Trump, including efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, should continue.
The developments come amid several ongoing investigations into Trump and in the wake of the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, where agents reportedly recovered 11 sets of classified documents.
The former president recently invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when questioned in the New York attorney general’s probe his business and finances. And Rudy Giuliani was also recently told he’s a target of a Georgia special grand jury investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. Giuliani served as Trump’s personal attorney.
Trump is also under scrutiny from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Lawmakers on the committee have pressed the Justice Department to criminally investigate Trump’s role in the incident.