A chairman of the Republican Senate Committee on Wednesday used his panel to continue to push for allegations of what he called “ election irregularities, ” as President Donald Trump appeared to be watching from the White House, while Democrats denounced the hearing as a way to challenge Trump’s baseless claims. to make fraud credible.
While Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a strong Trump supporter who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has now said he accepts Joe Biden as the President-elect and will not contest the Electoral College’s results when Congress meets In order to certify them next month, he insisted the hearing should be “not controversial.”
“I think we should all want to restore confidence in our electoral system,” Johnson said.
To counter Johnson, Democrats called Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency – fired by Trump after stating there was no evidence of electoral fraud – to testify. Krebs defended his work in full, concluding that the 2020 election was the “safest in US history.”
“I think we have passed the point where we should have a discussion about the outcome of these elections,” said Krebs, citing Monday’s electoral college results. “I think the ongoing attacks on democracy and the outcome of these elections only serve to undermine confidence in the elections and ultimately undermine the institutions that support elections. It will be much more difficult in the future.”
Members of both parties said they respected Krebs and that he worked within DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. But President Trump, tweeted just after the hearing ended, continued to attack him.
“Chris Krebs was completely denounced and found wrong in the Senate hearing on the fraudulent 2020 election,” Trump tweeted. “Massive FRAUD happened with machines, out-of-state voting, illegal immigrants, dead people, no signatures – and a whole lot more!”
Twitter was quick to hit the tweet with a label that allegations of election fraud are disputed.
Trump also tweeted that Johnson is “doing an excellent job” and then cited unsubstantiated claims about problems in Nevada made by Trump attorney Jesse Binnall as one reason why the election results there should be quashed.
“We cannot pretend that this problem did not occur,” Binnall said, rejecting allegations of fraud by the federal judge. “This is the United States of America we’re not running from, we’re fixing it. We have to use every arrow in our quiver to fix it.”
Johnson did not stop advocating that any serious changes in the election results should be the result of testimonials. But before the witnesses finalized their opening speech, Johnson and the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Gary Peters, D-Mich., Yelled at each other about how the committee handled the allegations related to another issue: the 2016 election. and Russian disinformation.
“This is awful what you are doing to this committee,” Peters said after Johnson alleged that Peters falsely insinuated that he had spread Russian disinformation.
“It’s what you did to this committee,” Johnson retorted.
Johnson has acknowledged that he does not believe that the election results can meaningfully be destroyed on this point, but that an open question is “whether the degree of fraud would change the outcome of the election.”
“This year, dozens of lawsuits through the certification process in every state and through the vote of the Electoral College have collectively concluded that this would not be the case,” Johnson said.
But he held the hearing, calling it “close scrutiny” necessary to restore America’s confidence in the electoral system.
Peters called it harmful.
“Mistakes happen in elections, but there is a difference between a clerk making a mistake that is caught and corrected during routine checks and calling the entire election fraudulent or stolen when there is no evidence just because you don’t like the result,” said Peters . .
At least one member of the Republican Committee, Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, declined to participate.
Romney said on CNN on Tuesday that he did not believe the hearing was “productive” at this point.
Several attorneys, including those representing cases claiming to have potential electoral fraud in Nevada and Wisconsin, seemed to testify to the need for more investigation into the election. Nearly 60 cases were brought across the country alleging irregularities in the elections, and nearly all have been dismissed by the courts.
But some of the attorneys who appeared before the committee today joined Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., In his judgment that courts did not necessarily rule whether there was fraud, as many cases were dismissed on procedural grounds before being were disputed on the merits.
“The courts have not said there is no fraud,” said Paul. “The courts just didn’t judge the fraud and didn’t hear about it.”
Lawyers argued that election monitoring remains necessary. Jim Troupis, who sued for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, followed Paul’s logic.
“If you don’t do this research, there really will be no analysis and there will be no opportunity to achieve the integrity we all want,” said Troupis. “No one at any point in the trial was suggesting that the Wisconsin allegations are anything but serious and substantive,” Troupis said.
But Krebs said it is time to end the partiality and make progress to preserve democracy.
“Democracy in general is fragile,” said Krebs. “It requires commitment and persistence on both sides if one party does not participate in the process and instead undermines the process, we risk losing democracy. We have to get back together as a country.”