Josh Hawley dodges question during Fox News
grilling on election challenge
Prominent Republican declines to say whether he is
involved in effort to reverse result when Congress meets on Wednesday
Asked if he was trying to “overturn the election” and
keep Donald Trump in power, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “That
depends what happens on Wednesday.”
Martin
Pengelly in New York
@MartinPengelly
Tue 5 Jan
2021 14.03 GMT
A prominent
Republican senator has declined to clearly answer a question about whether he
is involved in a bid to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election
that Democrat Joe Biden won convincingly in November.
Asked if he
was trying to “overturn the election” and keep Donald Trump in power, the
Missouri senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “That depends what happens on
Wednesday.”
That is
when Congress will meet to count Joe Biden’s 306-232 electoral college victory,
which has been certified by all 50 states. Formal objections due to be raised
by Hawley, around a dozen other senators and more than 100 Republicans in the
House will not overturn the result – as Trump and his supporters hope they
will.
Democrats
hold the House, guaranteeing defeat there, and Senate majority leader, Mitch
McConnell, and other senior Republicans in that chamber also oppose the
objections.
Speaking on
Monday night, Hawley at first avoided questions about whether he was trying to
overturn an election and thereby disenfranchise millions of Americans,
insisting he was objecting to the handling of the presidential election in
states including Pennsylvania.
“I just
want to pin you down,” the anchor Bret Baier said, eventually, “on on what
you’re trying to do. Are you trying to say that as of 20 January [inauguration
day] that President Trump will be president?”
“Well,”
said Hawley, “that depends on what happens on Wednesday. I mean, this is why we
have to debate.”
Baier
answered: “No it doesn’t. The states, by the constitution, they certify the
election, they did certify it by the constitution. Congress doesn’t have the
right to overturn the certification, at least as most experts read it.”
“Well,”
Hawley said, “Congress is directed under the 12th amendment to count the
electoral votes, there’s a statute that dates back to the 1800s, 19th century,
that says there is a right to object, there’s a right to be heard, and there’s
also [the] certification right.”
Baier
countered: “It’s from 1876, senator, and it’s the Tilden-Hayes race, in which
there were three states that did not certify their electors. So Congress was
left to come up with this system, this commission that eventually got to
negotiate a grand bargain.”
That
bargain left a Republican president, Rutherford Hayes, in power in return for
an end to Reconstruction after the civil war. In August, the historian Eric
Foner told the Guardian: “Part of the deal was the surrender of the rights of
African Americans. I’m not sure that’s a precedent we want to reinvigorate, you
know?”
Baeir
continued: “But now all of the states have certified their elections. As of 14
December. So it doesn’t by constitutional ways, open a door to Congress to
overturn that, does it?”
“My point,”
Hawley said, “is this is my only opportunity during this process to raise an
objection and to be heard. I don’t have standing to file lawsuits.”
Trump’s
campaign has filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging electoral results, losing
the vast majority and being dismissed by the supreme court.
Hawley
dodged a subsequent question about whether his own White House ambitions are
the real motivation for his objection – as they seem to be for other senators
looking to appease the Trumpist base of the party.
Also on
Monday night, activists from the group ShutDownDC held what they called an
“hour-long vigil” at Hawley’s Washington home. Demanding he drop his objection,
they said they sang, lit candles and delivered a copy of the US constitution.
Hawley, in
Missouri at the time, complained that “Antifa scumbags” had “threatened my wife
and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and
tried to pound open our door.”
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