In an interview Sunday, one day after the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik — a prominent member of House GOP leadership — would not commit to voting to certify the 2024 election.
Stefanik, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump who has been oft speculated as a possible running mate for the former president, joined over 140 of her Republican congressional colleagues to vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election results in at least one state even after the violent Capitol riot spurred by unfounded election fraud claims by Trump and his allies. The investigation into the attack has resulted in over 1,200 individuals charged with crimes and over 800 guilty pleas or convictions, including over 150 guilty of assaulting, resisting, impeding and/or obstructing officers and some convicted of sedition against the U.S. government.
“We will see if this is a legal and valid election. What we're seeing so far is that Democrats are so desperate they're trying to remove President Trump from the ballot that is the suppression of the American people,” Stefanik said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” citing constitutional challenges to Trump’s place on the ballot in some states and the criminal prosecutions of the 2024 GOP frontrunner as evidence of a coordinated effort to keep him from the White House.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a statement affirmed by dozens of judges and election officials from both parties who dismissed or shot down claims of fraud and certified by a bipartisan majority in the House and the Senate. A recent Colorado ruling that removed Trump from the ballot — based on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from obtaining federal office — has been taken up by the Supreme Court.
There is also no evidence of coordination between President Joe Biden and two federal criminal trials — nor the two local prosecutions in Georgia and New York — being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor who has been given the mandate to act independently of Department of Justice leadership.
In a separate interview that aired on Sunday, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, arguing that the decisions of election officials in some states to expand voting access amid the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic were unconstitutional — an argument that Stefanik cited when she voted against certifying the Electoral College results from Pennsylvania.
State and federal courts have dismissed those arguments in all but two cases where judges ruled in 2022 that certain provisions were unconstitutional. But those precedents only apply going forward — meaning the changes were legal at the time they were implemented.
“The Constitution was violated in the run up to the 2020 election, not not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of COVID many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language. It's just a fact,” Johnson said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in an interview filmed during his trip to the southern border earlier this week. He would not say if he recognized Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, only stating that “he was certified as the winner of the election, he took the oath of office, he’s been the president for three years.”
Johnson authored a key amicus brief signed by over 100 Republican members of Congress that challenged the 2020 election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four swing states won by Biden.
“Mike's position, which people really need to think about because it's so chilling, is that somehow as a member of Congress he has the right to ignore the rulings of those courts to assert — absent any finding of fact — that somehow he feels that something that happened was unconstitutional, and therefore, that he can throw out the votes of millions of Americans. That's tyranny. It's not the rule of law. It's tyranny,” former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “You don't have to take my word for the fact that you can't count on these elected Republicans to defend the Constitution. Every time they go out and give an interview. They demonstrate it themselves”
Stefanik, a New York Republican who ascended to congressional leadership as a fervent Trump supporter tapped to replace the anti-Trump Cheney in 2021, also labeled people imprisoned or jailed in connection to Capitol riot investigations “hostages” one day after Trump marked the third anniversary of the attack by applying the same martyrdom to the alleged and convicted participants in the violent insurrection.
The remarks come as Hamas and other militant groups continue to hold over 100 hostages, including eight American citizens, in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war enters its fourth month.
“It's outrageous, and it's disgusting. And if you go and you look at what individuals have been convicted for, who are incarcerated, you'll find it extensively, these are people who were involved in violence against police officers in the assault on the Capitol,” Cheney said, responding to Stefanik directly. “You cannot say that you are a member of a party that believes in the rule of law. You can't say that you're pro-law enforcement. If you then go out and you say these people are ‘hostages,’ it's disgraceful.”
Stefanik also defended Trump from accusations that his increasingly authoritarian and dehumanizing rhetoric and policy proposals are reminiscent of that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Trump has recently said that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Hitler and other autocrats throughout history used the concept of blood purity as the basis for genocidal hatred of groups viewed as less-than-human.
“Yet again, we have the media which is so biased, which is reiterating whatever the talking points the Biden campaign is giving,” Stefanik said on Sunday. “The border crisis is poisoning Americans through fentanyl. It is poisoning people, including in my district who are dying from overdoses of fentanyl... So yes, I stand by President Trump.”
While the Biden campaign has compared Trump to Hitler with increasing frequency in recent months, historians and civil rights groups have similarly drawn the comparison, citing decades of scholarship on the German fascist and his ideology.
Stefanik, a fifth-term congresswoman who represents large swaths of New York’s northernmost reaches, did not rule out accepting an offer to serve as Trump’s vice president, saying she talks to him “frequently.” She was Trump’s second congressional endorser this cycle, offering her support in November 2022 before he officially announced his campaign.
“We've been focused on winning. There's so much work to do as the House Republican conference chair, as the representative for New York's 21st congressional district and we need to make sure that President Trump is in the strongest position when in the general election. That's what I've been focused on,” Stefanik said. “I've said for a year now I'd be honored to serve in the next Trump administration.”