New York Representative Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking member of House Republican leadership and a staunch defender of former President Donald Trump, refused to say whether she would certify the 2024 presidential election results.
“We will see if this is a legal and valid election,” Stefanik told Kirsten Welker of NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” Stefanik went on to accuse Democrats of “suppression of the American people,” referencing the various legal efforts to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024.
Welker pressed Stefanik on whether she’d “only commit to certifying the results if former President Trump wins.” “No, it means if they’re constitutional,” Stefanik replied. “What we saw in 2020 was unconstitutional circumventing of the Constitution, not going through state legislators when it comes to changing election law.”
As the House Republican conference chair, she has repeated on numerous occasions Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, and was one of 147 Republicans to vote on January 6, 2021 against certifying Biden’s victory.
In an interview on NBC, President Joe Biden‘s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, refuted Stefanik’s claim that Democrats are attempting to subvert democracy. “I’m not sure that this ‘I know you are, but what am I’ situation is going to work when it comes to democracy,” he said.
Stefanik’s interview aired a day after the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Welker asked her whether the people who participated in the attack should be “held responsible to the full extent of the law.”
The senior New York Republican replied that she had “concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages,” using Trump’s favored term for the over 1,200 people arrested for their roles in the riot. “We have a rule in Congress of oversight over our treatments of prisoners, and I believe that we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.”
In an interview on CBS, former GOP Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who served as vice chair of the House January 6 Select Committee, called Stefanik’s comments “outrageous” and “disgusting.” Stefanik replaced Cheney in the House leadership in 2021 after House Republicans removed the conservative from the Cowboy State from her position as conference chair for her refusal to back Trump’s election lies.
“It’s disgraceful for Donald Trump to be saying what he’s saying, and then for those who are attempting to enable him or attempting to further their own political careers to repeat it,” Cheney said. “You cannot say you are a member of a party that believes in the rule of law, you cannot say you are pro-law enforcement, if you then go out and you say these people are ‘hostages.’”
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