Jan. 6 Committee Should Investigate Biden’s Unsubstantiated Claims Questioning Election Legitimacy
A Federalist analysis of the subpoenas issued from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 published Thursday reveals a politicized probe fixated on investigating election integrity claims rather than Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s failures over Capitol security.
In nearly each of the 84 subpoenas handed down from the committee, the panel raised issue with the individuals’ claims of an illegitimate election as the probe’s central concern.
“The Select Committee needs to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to delay the certification of the 2020 election and amplify misinformation about the election results,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., as the committee issued a subpoena to former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in October. “We need to understand Mr. Clark’s role in these efforts at the Justice Department and learn who was involved across the administration.”
In December, the committee moved to hold Clark in contempt for refusal to surrender under the probe’s questionable authority.
The Jan. 6 Committee, then, under this ostensible purpose, ought to be investigating President Joe Biden over sowing the seeds for claiming the 2022 midterms will be illegitimate because his extreme agenda was blocked by a bipartisan vote.
On Wednesday, Biden was asked whether the president would still believe the November contests would be “fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate” in the absence of the Democrats’ colossal package federalizing elections making it to the White House.
“It all depends,” Biden said, “on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” indicting Republican reforms such as voter ID requirements as racist impediments to free and fair elections.
Biden characterized the fairness of the upcoming midterms (which are historically hostile to the party in the White House) as contingent upon congressional Democrats’ success in shepherding their takeover of election rules through both chambers.
“I think you’re going to see the people who they’re trying to keep from being able to show up, showing up and making the sacrifice that needs to make in order to change the law back to what it should be,” Biden said. “It’s going to be difficult.”
The president doubled down on his remarks of an “illegitimate” election in the pipeline in the same press conference moments later.
“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Biden said. “It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed.”
The White House attempted to clean up the president’s remarks Thursday, after the Democrats’ effort to change Senate rules to pass the legislation failed Wednesday night.
“Let’s be clear: [Biden] was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election,” wrote White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Twitter. In response, RealClearNews Reporter Philip Wegmann pointed out the president’s statements verbatim at Wednesday’s press conference.
“The president told me yesterday that the 2022 midterms ‘easily could be illegitimate,’” Wegmann wrote. “He added also ‘I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit.’”
Considering the Jan. 6 Committee’s feigned purity about elections, and its own members’ history of objecting to the certification of election results, the partisan probe ought to take more interest in the incumbent president’s claims of an illegitimate election 10 months away.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
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