Mark Penn, a former top adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, said Thursday that ABC needs to find out why the 2024 presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be skewed in favor of the Democratic presidential candidate, Just the News reported.

He demanded to know if the network’s news department deliberately worked at "rigging the outcome of this debate." Many commentators have noted how the moderators were more severe in insisting upon answers to questions from Trump while they allowed Harris to evade responses. Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis "fact-checked" many of Trump’s accusations and policy statements but questioned none of Harris’ comments.

Trump has already said that he will engage in no third debate with Harris while CNN host Jake Tapper said Kamala Harris dodged debate questions. Despite what often looked like a three against one debate, Trump emerged as the winner at least with undecided voters in a Reuters survey.

But Penn said "I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don't know how much of this was planned in advance," Penn told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"I don't know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that," he added.

Penn, chairman of the Harvard CAPS Harris Poll, noted that Harris has succeeded in convincing many people that Americans need to “turn the page” on Trump while presenting herself as the candidate of change even though she has occupied the number two slot in the current administration of President Joe Biden. He said the coverage of Harris’ campaign from the mainstream media has been “laughable.”

"It's a 50-50, race. He's [Trump] got more obvious tools to get across the finish line than she does and part of the thing here is that if the referees have their finger on the scale, it's harder to, you know, break through and overcome. And certainly, general media coverage has been fairly laughable," he said.

Penn provided some advice to the Trump campaign, saying it would be a good idea to send every voter a copy of the ACLU survey that Harris answered in which she indicated she was in favor of taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prisoners and defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement.