GOP senators press voting fraud claims
Allegations eroding confidence in democracy, ex-cybersecurity official says
WASHINGTON — Republican senators Wednesday further touted President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, two days after Democrat Joe Biden’s victory was sealed by the Electoral College.
Lawmakers bickered during a committee hearing as Democrats pushed back against the allegations and a former federal cybersecurity official who oversaw election security said continued attempts to undermine confidence in the process were corrosive to democracy.
The session, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee over Democratic protests, elevated the claims of fraud to the highest levels of government.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the committee chairman, said his goal was to have a bipartisan hearing to examine the election. But he repeated Trump’s assertions and focused on the claims being made by the president’s team.
There was no testimony from state or local election officials who conducted extensive checks to ensure the accuracy of the election before certifying the results. Those officials have said there was no indication of any widespread fraud.
Democrats did solicit the testimony of Christopher Krebs, who led the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency until he was fired by Trump on Nov. 17. Under Krebs, the agency operated a “rumor control” webpage that debunked some of the theories being promoted by Trump and his allies.
Under questioning, Krebs acknowledged that some of his staff had been approached about making changes to the webpage, but none were made and he said voting systems were secure in the 2020 election.
“I’m seeing these reports, that are factually inaccurate, continue to be promoted,” Krebs said. “We have to stop this. It’s undermining confidence in democracy.”
Attorney General William Barr has similarly addressed the claims of criminal fraud, saying earlier this month that there had been no indication of fraud on the level that could change the outcome of the election. On Tuesday, Trump announced that Barr would leave his post by the Christmas holiday after the president publicly expressed his frustration over the comments.
During the session, Trump tweeted that Krebs was “totally excoriated and proven wrong at the Senate Hearing on the Fraudulent 2020 Election,” and the president insisted that “Massive FRAUD took place.”
Trump and his allies have pushed theories involving voting machines manipulated by dead foreign leaders and argued that tens of thousands of fraudulent mail ballots escaped layers of security and scrutiny by election workers.
At one point during the hearing, Johnson and the committee’s top Democrat, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, yelled at each other after Johnson brought up Democratic claims that he spread disinformation earlier in the year about work done in Ukraine by Hunter Biden, the president-elect’s son. Johnson said Peters had “lied” about the Republican’s role. Peters shot back that Johnson was “airing old grievances.”
Peters said the hearing “gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies” and is destructive.
“These claims are false. And giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy,” Peters said.
Johnson said Trump’s election claims “raised legitimate concerns and they do need to be taken seriously.” Jesse Binnall, an attorney for the Trump campaign, testified that “our evidence has never been checked, only ignored.”
The Trump campaign and allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits alleging some type of voter fraud and nearly all have been dropped or dismissed by both conservative and liberal judges who have said the legal claims lacked evidence. The Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices, has also denied requests to hear a pair of cases aimed at invalidating the outcome of the election in key states.