Congressional Republicans "lied to" millions of President Donald Trump's supporters who were holding out hope that the election could be overturned because the process that was attempted is "deeply unconstitutional," Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Friday.
"Your leaders lied to you," the Texas Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"The process that we've been using on Jan. 6 is meant to deal in situations in which a state might send you competing slates of electors, which is what happened in 1886 and why they passed Electoral Count Act of 1887."
But the way the process was used this time around, and in 2005, and the reason why went on display Wednesday, because the purpose of the constitutional rules on elections is to have Congress count the electoral votes, but not to make determinations about them.
"If you put all the pressure on one body, you're going to see exactly what you saw on Wednesday every four years," said Crenshaw. "The founders knew this. They were very prophetic. This is why their intention was to not have Congress have any say in the electoral votes."
Crenshaw also accused his colleagues of going through "mental gymnastics" to make their argument about the election, even though he doesn't disagree that there were objections made or that there are concerns about election integrity after the November election.
The hard work, he added, must be done at the state level to win elections, not through Congress.
"You've got to identify what went wrong and how to fix it, and guess what else, you've actually got to persuade your neighbors to vote for it," said Crenshaw, who believes steps should be taken to safeguard elections. These include sending ballots to the correct homes, using identifications and signature verification, limiting mail-in balloting, and taking other security measures.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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