Republican says reps who voted to overturn election KNEW Donald Trump’s fraud claims were bogus

A freshman representative blasted his fellow Republicans for ‘lying’ about the possibility of overturning the election results in Congress because they wanted to fundraise off of the chaos and their loyalty to President Donald Trump.

Congressman Peter Meijer of Michigan, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, said accused the 

is not happy with how his first week of service in the House of Representatives went down, claiming his fellow Republicans who objected to the Electoral College results – even after a pro-Trump mob descended on the Capitol Wednesday – either did so to earn favor with the president and his supporters or felt threatened.

‘As we moved to accept Arizona‘s electors, a fellow freshman lingered near a voting terminal, voting card in hand. 

‘My colleague told me that efforts to overturn the election were wrong, and that voting to certify was a constitutional duty,’ Meijer detailed in an op/ed in The Detroit News on Saturday.

‘But my colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in,’ the freshman representative continued. ‘Profoundly shaken, my colleague voted to overturn.

Condemnation: Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican from Michigan, said that lawmakers who promoted election fraud claims – such as Missouri senator Josh Hawley – were responsible for riots

Sent while the Capitol was being desecrated: Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican rep, slammed the ‘grift’ which GOP members of Congress were involved in

‘I have been called a traitor more times than I can count. I regret not bringing my gun to D.C.,’ said freshman rep Peter Meijer, who refused to go along with fraud claims pushed by the most senior members of the GOP caucus

‘An angry mob succeeded in threatening at least one member of Congress from performing what that member understood was a constitutional responsibility,’ he wrote.

Of the several dozen GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate who voted to overturn the election, even after the unprecedented breach of the Capitol building, only five were freshmen: Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee.

Meijer did not say which of his freshmen colleagues was scared into submission.

Taylor Greene is a Q Anon follower and 9/11 truther, while Cawthorn, 25, spoke in the House after the mob had smashed through to back their demands. 

Boebert has demanded that she carry a firearm in Congress, but did not go out to face the rioters and joined other House members in a secure area.

‘Those of us who refused to cower, who have told the truth, have suffered the consequences,’ Meijer said in his op-ed. 

‘Republican colleagues who have spoken out have been accosted on the street, received death threats, and even assigned armed security.’

‘I have been called a traitor more times than I can count. I regret not bringing my gun to D.C.,’ he concluded.

But Meijer’s trenchant attack on House Republicans means he is directly criticizing the two most senior member so of the caucus  minority leader Kevin McCarthy and minority whip Steve Scalise.

Both went all-in on Trump’s claims and did nothing to reverse themselves as the Capitol was desecrated by his supporters.

Meijer and a dozen other GOP lawmakers objected to Republican attempts to delay certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. He was joined by the likes of Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas.

Meijer is taking over Justin Amash’s seat in Congress after the former Republican switched to Libertarian affiliation halfway through his term in a snub to the era of Trump Republicans.

‘Treason caucus.’ Critics have slammed House and Senate Republicans who voted to overturn the election results. The House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (left) is among them as was Jim Jordan, the Ohio rep who is a fanatical Trump loyalist

The 33-year-old Army Reserve veteran blasted other Republicans for using the attacks on Wednesday as an opportunity to align themselves closer with the objection effort and fundraise.

Both senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley send appeals for cash as the violence was happening and are now facing demands to resign or to face expulsion from the Senate. 

‘I was sitting in my office watching the speech that he was giving to the crowd, encouraging them to come to the Capitol, where he continued to talk about how this was a landslide election and that it was stolen from him,’ Meijer told Reason of the Wednesday chaos in an interview Friday. 

‘He believed that the outcome on November 3 could be reversed by Congress.’

‘And I talked to a number of folks who believed that,’ he continued. ‘And they believed that because they were being told that, right? They were being lied to. 

‘They were being misled. Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. 

‘Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift. I don’t understand how you can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on your conscience, I fundamentally do not. I’m just at a loss for words about how some of them have acted in ways that are just knowingly, provably false. And they know they’re lying too.’

‘I mean maybe I’m coming in here with too naive an expectation of human capacity and decency, but I also was an interrogator in Iraq, so it’s not like I’m a Pollyanna,’ he said.

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