WASHINGTON — Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) offered a lengthy and scathing rebuke Thursday to the last-ditch effort by some members of his own party to overturn the results of the presidential election.

A day after Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced he will join several House Republicans next week in objecting to certifying Joe Biden’s win in the Electoral College, Sasse called the effort a “dangerous ploy.”

“The president and his allies are playing with fire,” Sasse wrote on Facebook. “They have been asking – first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress – to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.

“Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” he added. “But they’re wrong – and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”

President Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims that widespread voter fraud in battleground states cost him the election. His campaign has lost dozens of lawsuits seeking to toss out votes. But A Fox News poll earlier this month found that 77% of Trump voters believe he actually won the election. 

Anticipating questions he might receive from his Republican constituents, Sasse in his statement went through each state where fraud was alleged. While the senator agreed there were some irregularities, he said they were not significant enough to warrant overturning the results in any state. He also noted that former Attorney General William Barr said he had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” 

Sasse said there is a “giant gulf between what President Trump and his allies say in public … and what President Trump’s lawyers actually say in courts of law.”

“And that’s not a surprise,” he wrote. “Because there are no penalties for misleading the public. But there are serious penalties for misleading a judge, and the president’s lawyers know that – and thus they have repeated almost none of the claims of grand voter fraud that the campaign spokespeople are screaming at their most zealous supporters.”

Sasse said Trump’s efforts were not a legal strategy, but a fundraising strategy to collect donations from his fired-up supporters.

“All the clever arguments and rhetorical gymnastics in the world won’t change the fact that this January 6th effort is designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans simply because they voted for someone in a different party,” Sasse said. “We ought to be better than that.  If we normalize this, we’re going to turn American politics into a Hatfields and McCoys endless blood feud – a house hopelessly divided.”

Congress will meet in a joint session Wednesday to vote on certifying the Electoral College results, in which Biden defeated Trump 306-232.

By law, Vice President Mike Pence, the presiding officer, can only hear objections if at least one member of each chamber speaks out. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and several incoming Republican House members have indicated they will object. On Wednesday, Hawley became the first senator to say he will join the effort.

Hawley said in his statement: “I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws. And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden.”

If Republicans in both the House and Senate indeed object Jan. 6, then the joint session would be suspended, and each chamber would go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must agree to it by a simple majority vote. If they do not both agree, the original electoral votes would be counted.

The House is controlled by Democrats, making the Republicans’ effort to overturn Biden’s victory an extreme long shot.

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), privately asked his caucus not to object to the Electoral College results, saying it would be a “terrible vote” for the Senate to have to take, according to two people familiar with the Republican meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.