WASHINGTON (AP) — In the hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, then-Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portmanvoted for President Joe Biden’s victory over defeated former President Donald Trump, despite Trump’s false accusations that Biden only won because of fraud.
But as Trump approaches his 2024 rematch with Biden, Portman has been replaced by Sen. J.D. Vance, a potential vice presidential pick who has repeated Trump’s false claims of fraud and said he will only accept the results this fall “if it is a free and fair elections.”
South Carolina Senator. Tim Scott and Florida Senator. Marco RubioOther possible VP picks also declined to object to Biden’s victory over Trump but were less committed this year. Rubio recently said that if “things are wrong” with the November election, Republicans will not accept the outcome.
And new House Speaker Mike Johnson helped orchestrate Trump’s failed legal challenge to Biden’s victory. He demurred when asked if he believed the 2020 election was legitimate during an event with other Trump allies about the upcoming election.
As Trump mounts a comeback bid to return to power, Republicans in Congress are more likely to cast doubt on Biden’s victory or deny that it was legitimate. the results in 2024.
A new report released Tuesday by States United Action, a group that tracks election deniers, says nearly a third of lawmakers in Congress somehow supported Trump’s effort to overturn or otherwise cast doubt on the 2020 results. to sow seeds about the reliability of the elections. Several others hope to join them and are running for House and Senate elections this year.
“The public should have a healthy dose of concern about the real risk of people coming to power who have shown they are unwilling to respect the will of the people,” said Lizzie Ulmer of States United Action.
The issue is particularly serious for Congress, given its constitutional role as the final arbiter of the validity of presidential elections. It will count the Electoral College results as it planned to do on January 6, 2021, a date now etched in history due to the violent attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
In its report, States United found that in Congress, 170 representatives and senators out of a total of 535 legislators could be categorized as election deniers. Heading into the fall elections, two new candidates for the Senate and seventeen new candidates for the House of Representatives are already on the ballot to join them this fall.
It’s not just Congress that is littered with people who supported the effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss, but also the highest ranks of the Republican Party.
“This is very alarming,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy programs at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “A democracy can only function if its participants commit to accepting the results of popular elections. That is it. That is the entire political system.”
The former president has picked Michael Whatley, who repeated Trump’s election lies, to co-chair the Republican National Committee with his daughter-in-law. Lara Trump. Christina Bobb, who was recently indicted for her alleged involvement in a scheme to recruit fake voters in Arizona, has been named the RNC’s chief of “election integrity.”
Under Trump’s leadership, the RNC is making the election process its top priority, hiring new staff and adding resources, said Danielle Alvarez, an adviser to both the Trump campaign and the party committee.
“Biden is in the White House, that’s true,” Alvarez said, “but there were problems in the election.”
To be clear, there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election that cost Trump re-election. Recounts, audits and reviews in the battleground states where he contested his loss all confirmed Biden’s victory, and courts dismissed dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies.
The States United report details how successful election deniers have been in strengthening their ranks in Congress. It examines the results of congressional party primaries in the thirteen states that held them this year and finds that in every state at least one election denier made it to the general election for a seat in the House of Representatives or the Senate.
The report defines election deniers as people who falsely claimed Trump won in 2020, spread misinformation about that election or took steps to overturn it, or refused to allow a separate race. It notes that at least 67 will be voted into the House of Representatives in November, including 50 incumbent seats. Three will run for Senate — one of whom, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, is a sitting president.
There have also been high-profile losses among election deniers. Last week, Republican Rep. Carol Miller, who also voted against accepting Biden’s victory, successfully fended off a primary challenge in West Virginia from Derrick Evans, who was convicted of a misdemeanor count of civil disorder after storming the Capitol on 6 January. deniers lost bids in 2022 for swing state offices such as governor or secretary of state that would have given them direct power over voting in 2024.
Still, the movement has grown by dominating Republican primaries. In the race for the nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, businessman Bernie Moreno, who previously said Trump was “right” to call 2020 “stolen,” won his primary. In Indiana, Republican Sen. Mike Braun voted to certify Biden’s victory, but he will step down this year to run for governor and is about to be replaced by Rep. Jim Banks, a prominent election denier running in that state easily won the Republican primaries. .
The report does not classify Rubio and Scott as election deniers, but skepticism about the reliability of votes has become a GOP organizing principle, especially for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Before becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives, Johnson recruited colleagues to support a lawsuit, which ultimately failed, brought by Trump’s allies to overturn his 2020 loss.
More recently, Johnson met with Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort to shore up his own political support amid a far-right insurgency seeking to oust him as chairman. He emerged with promising legislation in the House of Representatives that would be designed to prevent immigrants in the country illegally from voting.
During a news conference on the Capitol’s steps to announce the bill, the speaker acknowledged that it is difficult to prove that certain immigrants improperly cast ballots. Election experts say it is extremely rare for immigrants who are not allowed to vote to violate federal law.
While Congress has passed legislation providing safeguards to better protect against interference following the attack on the Capitol, lawmakers will ultimately be asked to accept their states’ 2024 results.
Vance stood by his recent comments. And Rubio said he expects lawsuits to follow in jurisdictions where outcomes are close, as sometimes happens.
“When people ask me, ‘Are you going to accept the outcome?’ I think some people are arguing that if there is something wrong with this election, we will point it out,” Rubio said in a brief interview.
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Riccardi reported from Denver.
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This story has been corrected to correct the spelling of the last name of United States spokeswoman Lizzie Ulmer.
