U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s demands that Georgia’s top election official overturn the state’s presidential election results amount to an abuse of power and ought to be considered illegal.

“It’s obviously appalling. I’m not a lawyer, but if that’s not illegal, it should be,” Hickenlooper told Colorado Politics in a telephone interview hours after the Denver Democrat was sworn into office in Washington, D.C.

“It goes against all the values that are essential to making sure a democracy succeeds,” he said.

Spokespeople for Colorado’s three Republican members of Congress – U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn, Ken Buck and Lauren Boebert – didn’t respond to requests for comment about Trump’s phone call.

Trump repeatedly urged Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to reverse his defeat in the state during an hourlong phone call Saturday first reported by The Washington Post.

The president, who has claimed without evidence that President-elect Joe Biden didn’t win the Nov. 3 election, floated unfounded conspiracy theories and claimed during the call that he won Georgia by “hundreds of thousands of votes” despite losing the state by 11,779 votes.

At one point, according to a recording of the call obtained by the Associated Press, Trump told Raffensperger: “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.”

“You can’t let people in positions of power abuse their position and, in essence, elicit misconduct,” Hickenlooper said. “How can you let someone try and change the results of an election? That’s what it certainly sounds like.”

For weeks, Trump has maintained pressure on Raffensperger and Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to declare Trump won the state, despite multiple audits and hand-recounts affirming Biden’s victory, the first time a Democrat carried the state since Bill Clinton’s 1992 win.

On Wednesday, a dozen GOP senators plan to object to the Electoral College vote during a joint session of Congress tallying the results, joining a larger number of House Republicans backing Trump’s claims. The objections will force votes in both chambers that will almost certainly affirm Biden’s election.

Hickenlooper said that ultimately Trump’s refusal to accept his loss won’t change the transition of power.

“The thing to remember is, on the 20th of January, Joe Biden is going to get inaugurated as the president of the United States,” Hickenlooper said. “That’s going to happen. We’ve seen over 20 court cases – each one gets struck down.”

Added Hickenlooper: “It’s very unfortunate because, from my perspective at least, it’s not something that’s going to make the country stronger.”

The AP didn’t receive a response from the president’s campaign to a request for comment on the phone call Sunday. Earlier, the AP said the White House referred questions to the campaign.

Biden senior advisor Bob Bauer on Sunday said the recording of the phone call “captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”

“We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place,” Bauer said in a statement.