Schumer Floor Remarks Calling On HSGAC Chairman Johnson To Call Off “Ridiculous Charade" Hearing That Undermines Faith in Our Democracy

Washington, D.C. — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor calling on Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) to call off his announced hearing next week that attempts to lend credence to President Trump’s wild and disproven conspiracy theories and undermines our democracy. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Despite the fact that the presidential election ended well over a month ago—and that by now every single state in the country and the District of Columbia have certified results—there are still many on the political right who refuse to accept reality.

Today, amazingly enough, 17 Republican Attorneys General will meet with President Trump to discuss their desperate and widely irresponsible lawsuit, which aims to literally overturn the will of the people on the grounds they didn’t like the results.

This has gone beyond ridiculous. No court in this country has found any of President Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud credible. No serious state election official—Democrat and Republican—has found them credible. Even the Trump Administration’s Justice Department, so browbeaten into political activities over the past four years, has not found a scrap of evidence that would affect the final result.

And yet, rather than accept the simple truth that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States, there are actually sitting Senators and Congress members who would prefer to undermine our democracy by indulging President Trump’s wild conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

Here in the Senate, the Chairman of the Homeland Security committee announced yesterday that, next week, he will convene a hearing on “election irregularities.”

When is this nonsense, so detrimental to our democracy, going to end? When? It’s already deeply irresponsible for my Republican colleagues, many of them, to stay silent about President Trump’s deliberate attempts to poison Americans’ faith in our elections.

It’s deeply irresponsible that there hasn’t been a full-throated defense of the validity of our elections by Republican Senators and the Republican leader, who still refuse to call Joe Biden president-elect.

But to go one step further, and use a Senate Committee as a platform to spread misinformation about our own elections – it’s beyond the pale.

So in conclusion, Chairman Johnson should call off this ridiculous charade of a Senate hearing, immediately. And if he won’t, Leader McConnell should intervene to ensure that the Committee does not indulge such quackery and conspiracy theories.  And he should acknowledge the results of the elections and make clear it’s time to move on, just as he was happy to do so when the shoe was on the other foot. Doing otherwise will add fuel to the fire that is undermining faith in our wonderful democracy.

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