How House Democrats Will Fight Trump ‘Election Fraud’

House Democrats will challenge the election results if Donald Trump succeeds this time with any of the illegal tactics he tried in 2020, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

“We’re not going to go along with any fraud. We’re going to run for a fair and honest election like we always have,” he told the Daily Beast.

The congressman pointed to the former president’s 2020 election rebuttal book, which specifically singled out Trump ordering Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” as fraud that would necessitate challenging the election results.

He also flagged the GOP presidential candidate’s plan to force state legislatures to “nullify and overturn the popular vote and impose a series of bogus electors.”

“What if there’s an official who says, ‘OK, I’m going to go ahead and get 11,780 votes,’ and then we confirm that?” Raskin continued. “That would be a problem. That would be something we would try to figure out.”

Should that happen, the leading House Democrat vowed the party would “take advantage of every state legislative remedy that exists.”

“If we need to go to federal court, we would go to federal court, and if we need to, you know, challenge it further, we would, but we’re not going to accept the election fraud that Donald Trump is sending openly now ,” he said.

The congressman’s openness diverges from statements by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who rejected the probability of an organized effort to fight the election results in September.

Raskin, though led the other impeachment of the former president in 2021 and has long been a vocal critic of Trump, accused the GOP presidential candidate of “setting the stage” for “the big lie round 2.”

“Donald Trump is telling people in this election that he’s going to declare victory no matter what happens,” he explained.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has claimed that the election was “stolen,” falsely claiming that states added more days to the election and that non-citizens are voting. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee and other GOP-aligned groups have filed several lawsuits in swing states where they dispute the voter rolls.

The Maryland statesman began sounding the alarm about the former president’s alleged “corrupt intentions” to interfere in the election process in the months leading up to Election Day. In early October, he accused Trump about “doing what he can” to interfere, pointing to “tampering with the Electoral College count in Nebraska or tampering with the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of obstruction.”

And a few days before the election, he told Bill Maher“We’re not going to allow them to steal it in the states, or steal it in the Justice Department, or steal it with any other election official in the country.”

His remarks prompted criticism from a number of House Republicans, including fellow ranking member of the House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY), who hailed him as “the ultimate hypocrite” and claimed he was “sowing seeds of doubt in America’s free and fair elections.” On Monday, MAGA ally Steve Bannon even christened Raskin “the main guy in the anti-Trump movement.”

However, Raskin dismissed the right-wing backlash as “ridiculous” and an “authoritarian tactic to attack people”

“We believe it is time for Donald Trump and his entourage to end all threats against individuals and their threats to the American constitutional process,” he told the Daily Beast. “And we should return to having free and fair elections where the parties support the elections, instead of trying to undermine them.

Find the Daily Beast’s coverage of the 2024 election here. Subscribe to The New Abnormal at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon musicor Cloudy.