Top GOP Officials Are Shooting Down 'Free the Delegates' Efforts

The rules for the Republican convention have cleared their first hurdle unchanged after the party's top lawyer gave a lengthy rebuke of efforts to unbind delegates to the national convention.

In a sign that top Republican officials here in Cleveland are taking last-ditch efforts to block Donald Trump seriously, two of the Republican National Committee's standing rules panel's most powerful members made clear their interpretation of the rules today.

"Trump is going to be the nominee," the committee's chair, Bruce Ash, told ABC News.

"The counsel’s opinion sent a strong message. And they have to take that seriously," he said. "It sent not just a legal opinion, but a political statement."

Some anti-Trump delegates, who fear they will not reach the threshold of support needed to force a vote on the full convention floor, also insist that delegates are already unbound under an interpretation of the current rules.

"After having been elected delegates, positions created by the rules and pursuant to the call, they may not retroactively change the rules under which they were elected," said John Ryder, the RNC's general counsel.

"The rules of the Republican Party both permit and require the binding of delegates," he added.

And in an unexpected move, Ash offered his first amendment in half a decade of leading the committee -- an effort to block candidates whose names were not placed in nomination from winning the presidential nod. The panel did not approve it.

The rules now must be approved by the full Republican National Committee, the convention's rules committee and the full Republican national convention.

Anti-Trump efforts hope to reach the required 28 of 112 members of support later this week to force a vote to unbind the delegates on the floor of the full convention next week. Leaders of the movement say they are close to the 28 members needed.

But these delegates must sign a petition to force a vote on the floor -- a requirement Ash says is a high bar for a delegate who are on the fence.

"People put pressure on them. We’ve seen it happen before," Ash told ABC News. "It’s just a normal political process that goes on, and not everybody makes it."

The most crucial vote for anti-Trump forces will come on Thursday or Friday, when the convention's rules panel will huddle to consider an amendment to unbind delegates.

Another motion, from Solomon Yue, an RNC rules member from Oregon, to freeze the 2016 convention rules was also swiftly side-stepped.

"I don’t think they have enough votes on the convention rules committee. Do they have enough votes for the minority report? I don’t know," Yue told ABC News.

"But I think the RNC standing rules committee not taking a clear stand on this could encourage the unbind delegates movement to get support and get to the minority report level," he said.

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