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Politifact’s Lie of the Year:
At the hearing on Election fraud today, here’s a dividing line. Sen Rand Paul sees dead people voting, which was not found out
Ron Johnson’s election fraud Senate hearing did not go well - Vox
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and a group of other Senate Republicans finally acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory this week — and then Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a Wednesday hearing aimed at undermining it.
Biden’s decisive Electoral College victory on Monday forced Johnson and some of his Republican colleagues to belatedly recognize the reality of President Donald Trump’s defeat, after weeks of suggesting Trump might still somehow be declared the winner of November’s election. Now unable to deny Biden will be the next president, the hearing basically served as a platform for Republicans to lie about Biden’s win being tainted.
“The election in many ways was stolen,” claimed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) at one point, in the bluntest example of how Republicans tried turning reality on its head.
But Paul didn’t even try to offer evidence to back his assertion up. And state officials spanning the political spectrum have one and all reported no irregularities that affected the result — many swing states held multiple recounts to ensure that this was the case.
The witness list illustrated how Johnson tried to stack the deck. Among them were two attorneys for the Trump campaign, a Republican state legislator from Pennsylvania, and Ken Starr, the former Bill Clinton investigator who is perhaps best known these days as a Trump-friendly talking head on Fox News.
All of those witnesses either had obvious bias or little to no firsthand information about the security of the 2020 election. But the exception to that was Chris Krebs, the former head of the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who Trump fired by tweet last month after he refuted Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories by calling the election “the most secure in American history.”
Krebs, a Republican, repeatedly knocked down suggestions from Johnson and others that the election results were somehow manipulated by pointing out that the counts in all the states the Trump campaign contested are backed up by paper ballots.
It’s important to step back and actually look at how votes are cast in the country, particularly with paper ballots, and that regardless of any internet connections, regardless of foreign hacking, as long as you’ve got the paper receipt … you can check your math.”
“Georgia did that three times and the outcomes were consistent,” Krebs added, alluding to the repeated recounts in Georgia that all showed Biden defeating Trump.
Krebs tried to patiently explain the safeguards that were in place to prevent election fraud, but at other points he didn’t try to hide the fact that he thinks Republicans needs to move on.
“I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” Krebs said, adding later: “We have to stop this. It’s undermining confidence in democracy.”
Much of Johnson’s hearing could’ve been mistaken for a Fox News segment
The ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), began the hearing by castigating Republicans for wasting time with a hearing aimed at delegitimizing President-elect Biden in particular and US elections in general.
“Whether intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies and is a destructive exercise that has no place in the US Senate. Joe Biden won the election,” Peters said during his opening statement.
“There were no widespread election irregularities that affected the final outcome. These claims are false. And giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy,” he added.