Sen. Chris Murphy, one of Donald Trump’s sharpest critics throughout Trump’s presidency, warned Monday of a “dire” and “grave” situation brewing in Congress, as a group of Republican lawmakers undertakes a quixotic bid to keep Trump in office and the president himself resorts to desperate measures to spin an electoral victory out of his decisive defeat.

In West Hartford Monday, Murphy sharply condemned a phone call Saturday in which Trump told the Georgia secretary of state Saturday to “find 11,780 votes” and deliver him a retroactive electoral victory in the state. Trump’s comments, Murphy said, represented “a real attack on democracy and on the voters’ intent.”

Throughout the Trump administration, which draws to a close on Jan. 20, Murphy and his colleague Sen. Richard Blumenthal have been vocal critics of Trump. Both were strong proponents of the Congressional investigation into Trump’s July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which was at the center of Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives last year. Trump was subsequently acquitted in the Senate.

“My hope is that some Republicans who thought this was all bluster now see that the president is very serious about using the huge power of his office to try to bully election officials into throwing out the vote,” Murphy said Monday. “That’s what he was asking in this call.”

During Trump’s one-hour phone call Saturday, first reported by The Washington Post, he urged Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to modify the state’s election results so that Trump would win, ranting about his support in the state and attempting to cajole and intimidate Raffensperger into ceding to his request.

In advance of the ratification of the presidential election results in Congress Wednesday, a group of current and incoming Republican lawmakers have signed on to a last-ditch effort to vote against President-elect Joe Biden’s fair victory. Every state has verified and certified their election results and Trump has repeatedly failed to prove widespread voter fraud in court. The Republican bid to overturn the election has practically no path to success, given that both the Democratic-majority House and Republican-majority Senate would have to agree to reject a state’s electoral votes.

In a live Facebook conversation with constituents Monday evening, Murphy emphasized that President Trump and Republicans in Congress are behind “this attempt to overthrow democracy.”

“It is not just a stain on American democracy but a body blow that could prove ultimately fatal,” Murphy said, predicting fraudulent challenges to future elections may be successful.

“This will be the most significant attempt to end American democracy, to end the ability of voters to chose the President of the United States, in our nation’s history,” Murphy said, noting that debate on Electoral College objections filed by Republicans will likely last though the night on Wednesday.

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“It is not possible that Joe Biden is not going to be sworn in as president. This effort will fail,” Murphy said. “Joe Biden won this election and it wasn’t close. President Trump has tried to rob him of that mandate. ...The damage to our democracy is really serious.”

“Voters have to remove from office people who hate democracy. We’ve got to run a campaign against these people.”

Blumenthal, speaking at a food pantry in New Britain Monday, warned that Republicans’ effort to discredit the election is not just a “a politically-opportunistic sideshow” but is also “deeply dangerous, because it validates this kind of threat and intimidation from the President of the United States seeking to attack our democracy.”

Murphy said that the political fallout from Trump’s call with Raffensperger could potentially impact “how long or how hard” Republicans fight to overturn the election results Wednesday.

At one point during Trump’s call with Raffensperger, he told him, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia with 49.5% of the vote, compared to 49.3% for Trump, according to The Associated Press.

Trump also suggested to Raffensperger that if he did not come up with thousands of ballots — which he claimed, without evidence, had been illegally destroyed — Raffensperger would be taking a “big risk.” Throughout the conversation, Raffensperger pushed back against Trump’s assertions and pleas, telling him, “We don’t agree that you have won.”

“[Trump] reminded the secretary of state that he could face jail time if he didn’t change the results to result in a Trump win,” Murphy said. “That’s not true, but when the President of the United States is telling you that you might face jail time if you don’t do what he says, there are a lot of people out there who would listen to him.”

Blumenthal said on Twitter that the public release of the call was a “gut wrenching moment of reckoning.”

“After Jan. 20th, there will be plenty of time & reason for investigation & accountability,” he warned, referring to the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Biden.

Murphy noted that he has been in touch with some of his Republican colleagues in Congress, including some from the group intending to challenge the electoral college results.

“I think there is an outstanding question of how many states will be contested,” he said. “Is this going to be a two-day affair in which senators are contesting seven or eight states, or are they going to decide in the end to contest one or two states? Maybe the tape will have some effect on how long or how hard they fight.”

He added, “I don’t think it’s good for the country if this fight over the electoral college goes on for days.