Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Marco Rubio

Interview

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HANNITY: All right. So, as a Florida recount is underway, Broward County has come into focus for its history of incompetence and controversy, especially under the leadership of election supervisor, there she is, Brenda Snipes.

According to former DOJ official J. Christian Adams, Snipes' misdeeds include prematurely destroying ballots after the 2016 primary race, reporting more registered voters than citizens, doctoring reports about cleaning voter rolls and losing the manual on removing dead voters.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been very vocal with his concerns about the election and all these era galaxies. He joins us right now.

Senator, honestly, you were the first that really brought this to my attention, thank you. Fifty-seven thousand-vote lead, now dwindling down to 12,000. Now, they are going to have even more time.

I'm concerned. You actually said -- you used the word "steal". Do you believe there's been an effort here, corruption here to steal an election?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA.: Well, here's what I believe. I believe the law hasn't been followed from the beginning. You know, those early votes, the last time they were cast was the Sunday before election. By law, those were supposed to be downloaded and sent to the state by 7:30 p.m. on the night of the election.

And then you have to process the absentee ballots, the mail ballots that have come in before that time. And then there's always some that come in Monday and Tuesday before the election. Those should be shortly thereafter. They didn't follow any of that.

It is also additional votes added to every county, because people are voting for overseas, or because you haven't fully processed all the ones that you had by 7:30. But you're supposed to update that every 45 minutes. They didn't do that.

We know for example that is part of the Broward County's vote count, it includes at least 19 people who were disqualified from voting by their own canvassing board, who they only took the ballots to after being forced, after being cut, and we don't know how many others that may have happened in. And now we know they didn't start the recount, the machinery count until this morning, after -- everybody else started Saturday or Sunday, Miami-Dade is almost done. So, it's irregularity after irregularity.

And as far as stealing is concerned, let me just make this one point on that, that's what election lawyers -- the election lawyers are not coming to Florida to make sure every vote is counted. The reason why election lawyers get involved is to make sure as many votes as possible for their client is counted, and as many votes as possible for their opponent is disqualified.

And when you have in office -- this in office, an election office this incompetent, and in this lawbreaking, it creates enormous opportunity for those sorts of arguments to be made. And suddenly the elections are decided by a judge or by lawyers, not by voters the way they are supposed to be.

HANNITY: Well, we know, for example, that Snipes accidentally, she mixed in rejected provisional ballots with a number of valid votes. So, what that ultimately means, senator, is that the entire count is irreversibly corrupted, and you know we have all of these violations, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, now it's happening again.

I, for the life of me, especially after all we went through, dimpled, pebbled, scattered, smothered, covered, and everything else in 2000, this keeps happening. This keeps happening. There are 57 counties, 65 of them got it right. And more importantly, 35 of those counties had been victimized by the hurricane, especially the Panhandle. They got it right.

RUBIO: Yes. And so, you talked about a case, these provisional ballots are they were in an envelope. And what supposed to happen is you present those to the canvassing board to decide whether or not they are allowed to vote. She didn't do that. She opened it up. She basically decided they were going to count and she counted the votes.

Then she got caught. She said, I submitted to the canvassing board and they found that 21 of them should not count. So, they said, all right let's find the 21. It's too late. Once you pull the ballot out of the envelope there's no way to match one with the other.

So, that's just one example of the kinds of things that have been going on top of some of the history that you've outlined already over this sort of thing. And so, yes, it's deeply concerning that they are not following the law. They are not following the law and that's why we have election laws.

I want every legal vote that was cast in a timely fashion to count.

HANNITY: exactly.

RUBIO: No one here is asking that now to happen. One more point and here's where we really got to keep an eye. What will happen after the machine recount is any race in the state that's within less than a quarter of one point which will be the Senate race and the agriculture race, there will have to a hand recount of the over votes and under votes, basically that somebody skip the ballot and not vote for this race.

Now the canvassing board, if the accounting teams don't do it, have to sit down and determine did the voter intend to vote or not. And that's where lawyers get involved and start arguing that a mark here and cross here and circle over here was voter intent.

Now the statute is pretty clear, but what that should be that doesn't mean anyone is going to follow it or that they are going to follow it. So, there's a lot to be concerned about and that's why it's so important that they had scrutiny and transparency and that we watch it every step of the way.

HANNITY: Are you now confident that we have this -- we know the Attorney General Pam Bondi we just spoke with, are you confident with that this will be done right. We know, for example, the attorneys for Mayor Gillum and soon-to-be ex-Senator Nelson that they even wanted an illegal immigrant's vote, they objected. They wanted that counted.

Then of course we're are finding ballots in the back of rental cars in Tampa from that county. So, are you confident when they do over/under votes, if there is a mark like 400, you know, so far away that they are going to try and argue that those are real votes and that they intended to vote when you miss the entire oval or whatever way you do it?

RUBIO: Well, there is no doubt that the lawyers are going to argue that any kind of mark that favors their client they are going to argue with intent. The statute is pretty clear. The law says if you are going to, for example, circle names as opposed to filling in the bubble then you have to do that consistently throughout the ballot.

I'm confident that lawyers are going to try to get everything counted. I don't know what the canvassing board is going to decide.

HANNITY: yes.

RUBIO: I don't know what's some federal judge is going to step in and decide. But that's the point. This level of incompetence gives you no confidence about anything with regards to that office and that's why we got to keep paying attention to what's happening there.

HANNITY: Senator, you called everyone's attention to this, you are ahead of the curve. Thank you for standing up for legitimate, a legitimate, fair, legal process.

The fact that so many laws were broken has to disturb every American. Thank you, sir, for being with us.

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