Photo via Republican Party of Wisconsin - Facebook
Ron Johnson on stage
Ron Johnson
The most important finding by the House Committee investigating January. 6 was that the violent attempt to overthrow democracy wasn’t a single event. It consisted of multiple crimes by Donald Trump desperately trying to cling to power despite his defeat by Joe Biden in an election that wasn’t even close.
Trump’s corruption of democracy continues to be embraced by Republican allies in Congress and in state and local government.
Wisconsin Republicans, like many other party officials nationally knew, it was insane and un-American for Trump and his henchmen Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman to try to overthrow Biden’s election, but that didn’t stop them from going along with it.
Fake Electors
Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Andrew Hitt was instantly suspicious when a Trump attorney contacted him asking for a list of Republicans to serve as Trump electors after Biden won the state. “I hope they are not planning on asking us to do anything like try and say we are the only proper electors,” Hitt texted his executive director Mark Jefferson, according to the House Committee’s final report.
That’s exactly what Trump was planning to do. Giuliani called Hitt two weeks later outlining the fake electors plot. This time Hitt was explicit in his text to Jefferson: “These guys are up to no good and it’s going to fail miserably.”
In a later exchange with Hitt before January 6, Jefferson was equally graphic about the absurdity of the conspiracy: “Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President (Mike Pence).”
Lies Under Oath
It takes one to know one as they say. Because despite all their protestations, by that time Hitt and the other fake Republican electors he recruited were among the “freaking Trump idiots” who signed fraudulent government documents swearing they were “the duly elected and qualified Electors” casting Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for Trump. They knew it was a lie.
|
|
So did Pence. That’s why when Wisconsin obediently flew its fake documents to Washington, Pence refused Sen. Ron Johnson’s attempt to personally hand him fraudulent electoral votes from Wisconsin and Michigan on January 6.
All of the federal crimes Trump convinced local Republicans to commit in Wisconsin and six other battleground states were doomed from the start. Pence turned out to have far more political courage than most other Republican officials did. He simply refused to participate in Trump’s unconstitutional destruction of American democracy.
The whole purpose of creating those fake slates of electors was so Trump could browbeat the usually compliant Pence into throwing out Biden’s legitimate electoral votes when he presided over the joint session of Congress counting state electoral votes to certify Biden’s election victory over Trump.
Inciting Violence
Among more than 30,500 documented lies Trump told as president was the one on January 6 inciting the violent insurrection at the Capitol: “We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
Just the opposite was true. Trump was demanding Congress count the fraudulent slates of Trump electoral votes Republicans had unlawfully created in Wisconsin and six other states Biden won, turning the election upside down.
There was only one lawful slate of electors in each of those states. Those were the Biden electors certified by Democratic and Republican governors alike based on the election results.
Cowardly Republicans
Pence thwarted the fake elector plot, but the cowardly participation in the unconstitutional scheme by Republicans in Wisconsin and other states led to death and destruction anyway. In his fury at Pence for failing to reverse his election defeat, Trump unleashed the most violent armed attack on the U.S. government since the Civil War.
The fight to protect democracy isn’t over yet. Republicans suffered widespread losses in the midterms from voters repelled by the election deniers and unqualified extremists Republicans nominated. Wisconsin is narrowly divided politically but its corruptly gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts produce lopsided Republican majorities even when sane Democrats like Gov. Tony Evers and Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul win statewide.
Photo via vanordenforcongress.com
Derrick Van Orden
Derrick Van Orden
All five Republican congressmen won re-election despite voting against Trump’s impeachment for inciting the mob insurrection that nearly murdered Pence and his family. That included Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany who voted to throw out Biden’s votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania. They would have disenfranchised Wisconsin voters too, but it didn’t come to a vote.
Wisconsin’s pro-insurrection Republican incumbents will be joined by newly elected Derrick Van Orden, an election denying, homophobic, anti-abortion extremist. The 3rd District congressman-elect used campaign funds to join the January 6 protest. Van Orden claims he didn’t participate in the violence, but photographs show he breached the police barriers.
Van Orden will fit right in the new House narrowly controlled by “freaking Trump idiots” we all know very well. The most important political priorities for the Republican-controlled House are to halt funding for democracy in Ukraine and the United States.
