See the election deniers rewarded for embracing the 'Big Lie'
Despite fueling a violent insurrection, the conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election are alive and well — and many of the people who promoted them have gained power and status within the GOP because of it, according to an analysis in The Guardian Thursday.
"The belief quickly became Republican orthodoxy: it was embraced by Republican officeholders across the country as well as local activists who began to bombard and harass local election officials, forcing many of them to retire," said the report. "In 2022, several Republicans who embraced election denialism lost their races to be the top election official in their state. But at the same time, many Republicans who unabashedly embraced the idea and aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher office."
Many of the figures are nationally prominent; Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who voted to object to electors from swing states that voted for President Joe Biden, is now Speaker of the House, and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who signed onto a brief asking the Supreme Court to throw out election results, is his second-in-command as House Majority Leader.
But at the state level, more of these figures abound.
For one, there is Liz Harris, a newly-elected Arizona state representative. "She sits on the house’s election committee. Since her election, which was confirmed via a state-mandated recount, Harris has said she wouldn’t vote for anything unless there was a revote of the 2022 election, and she has made good on her promise," said the report. "She has continued to call for a redo of the 2022 election."
Other include Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the lawsuit Scalise signed onto and is seeking new powers from the legislature to conduct "election fraud" investigations after being rebuked by the state Supreme Court; Burt Jones, one of the fake Trump electors in Georgia, who is now the state's lieutenant governor, and Kristina Karamo, who lost her election-denialist bid for Michigan Secretary of State but now chairs the state GOP.
To this day, no Republican has submitted credible evidence to a court that the 2020 or 2022 elections were rigged or corrupt.