‘You’re kidding yourself’: Crenshaw spars with GOP activist who claims 2020 election was stolen
Appearing at a GOP fundraising dinner in Illinois on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw clashed with a conservative activist after insisting there was not enough election fraud to account for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race.
Crenshaw, a Republican from Houston who is considered a rising GOP star, told attendees during a Q&A session not to “kid yourself into believing that’s why we lost.” His statement runs contrary to claims by Trump and many of the former president’s supporters, who contend the election was stolen through a massive voter fraud scheme, of which they have yet to display proof.
“It’s just something you have to accept,” Crenshaw said. “Is there a lot of voter fraud? Yeah, there probably is. Enough that Trump won? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Five different states? Hundreds of thousands of votes? You’re kidding yourself.”
As Crenshaw pushed ahead with his explanation, Bobby Piton, a Republican who is running for Senate in Illinois, heckled the Houston congressman, telling him he was “wrong” while vowing President Joe Biden’s win would be overturned in Maricopa County, Arizona — where officials last month finished recounting the 2.1 million ballots cast during the 2020 election.
“I have plenty of proof,” Piton said, interrupting Crenshaw. “It’s gonna flip. You watch.”
Last December, Crenshaw was one of 126 Republicans to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit seeking to delay the certification of presidential election results in Georgia, Michican, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all swing states won by Biden. The U.S. Supreme Court — which grew more conservative as three Trump nominees were placed on it during his term — tossed the lawsuit without a hearing.
Crenshaw told the Houston Chronicle editorial board his decision to sign the brief was aimed at “putting pressure on states to actually fix their election systems” but not actually overturning the results.
“The amicus itself does not talk about delaying electoral votes or overturning the electoral votes,” Crenshaw said at that time. “It doesn’t go so far as to say that. If it did, I would have a lot more reluctance to be signing on to it. I would fully admit this was not an easy decision either way.”
While some minor cases of election fraud have been identified in local Texas elections, multiple academic studies, a nationwide investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and Paxton’s own “Election Fraud Unit” have yet to discover widespread fraud on the scale alleged by Trump and other Republicans.
After video of Crenshaw’s comments spilled onto social media, some conservative media figures praised him, as did Democrats who were astonished to find themselves agreeing with a frequent antagonist.
“Good for Crenshaw,” tweeted Stephen Hayes, editor of The Dispatch, a Trump-critical conservative site. “It shouldn’t take courage to dismiss loony conspiracies, but in today’s GOP it often does.”
Crenshaw recently was on the opposite side of Trump in a North Texas congressional election, supporting the winner of the election, Republican Jake Ellzey, while Trump backed the second place candidate, Susan Wright.
A critic of Trump before embracing him following the 2016 election, Crenshaw famously omitted any mention of Trump in the speech he delivered during the 2020 Republican National Convention.
jasper.scherer@chron.com
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