Republicans pushed election lies and armed protests, but say their rhetoric didn’t spur U.S. Capitol chaos

The morning after the D.C. riot, Erik Nordman called his state senator, Sen. Roger Victory, R-Hudsonville, with concerns about a letter Victory signed urging Congress to examine allegations of voter fraud.

Victory’s office got back to him, and a staff member left a voicemail saying only those who rioted in D.C. could be blamed for what took place.

To Nordman, it was a disappointing response.

“You can’t just say, ‘Well, I didn’t tell people to storm the Capitol.’ Everybody has a role to play. Are you tamping it down, or are you, you know, inflaming and inciting?” Nordman said.

Republicans in Michigan and across the country have denounced the violence from the far-right that culminated in a hostile occupation of the U.S. Senate Chamber and five deaths in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. But experts say Republicans’ rhetoric and baseless accusations of election fraud created a political climate ripe for exactly the kind of riot that occurred.

Some Michigan Republicans have publicly questioned the legitimacy of the state’s certified election results, despite every legal challenge from President Donald Trump and his allies here failing. Now, they’re distancing themselves from responsibility for the overall political climate in which a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the vote from being “stolen.”

U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Bruce Twp., was one of three Michigan congressmembers who objected to Electoral College votes in two states. U.S. Reps. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet and Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, also objected, but didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Asked if she bore any responsibility for the violent protests, McClain said in an email, “The people who committed the violence on Wednesday must be held responsible and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution (to) honor and uphold the law, and that is how I voted in regard to certifying the 2020 election.”

In Michigan, 12 Republican state representatives signed onto a lawsuit from the Texas Attorney General that sought to invalidate Joe Biden’s Michigan win. And Victory was one of 11 Republican state senators who signed a letter urging congress to “pursue every available option” to investigate election fraud ahead of its meeting to approve Electoral College votes.

MLive contacted all 23 to ask whether election fraud allegations contributed to the violent overthrow that occurred. Two agreed to be interviewed for this article.

Sen. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, signed the letter. He doesn’t see a connection between Republican leaders questioning election results to what happened in D.C.

“I know you want to blame President Trump and I know you want to blame Republicans who signed the letter to Congress and everything else, but I’m not responsible for what people do criminally,” Barrett said.

Victory said he believes people are individually accountable and everybody has free will. But he holds politicians to a higher standard.

“There is responsibility upon elected officials, mind you, it might be a state representative, senator or the president of the United States, to make sure that when they’re speaking and articulating issues they do not inflame,” Victory said.

Asked if he lived up to that standard, he said, “Yes, I try to. And I hold that very true to myself … If I don’t bring (election concerns) forward, I believe then I’m not doing what my job is. But make sure it’s not done of an inflammatory or provocative way.”

Michigan’s opening act for Capitol chaos

There’s a popular meme format circulating social media in which two photos are posted, with the respective labels “How it started” and “How it’s going.”

Jenna Bednar, a political science and public policy professor at the University of Michigan, couldn’t help but think of the meme when she saw images of Wednesday’s U.S. Capitol riots.

“Do you remember the day when there were several men who entered the Senate gallery in Lansing bearing arms?” Bednar said. “That image was in my head.”

Men toting large guns loomed over the Michigan Senate April 30 during session, as they protested Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 shutdowns. For social distancing reasons, spectators weren’t inside for the House session – as there are more representatives than senators and needed room to space out.

Angry mobs formed in the hall, chanting “Let us in!” to no avail.

Michigan is one of only a few states to not ban guns inside its Capitol – so this wasn’t illegal.

But it was intimidating, Democratic lawmakers said. The behaviors weren’t fully condemned by both parties.

“Absolutely it was unprecedented. And then we started to accept it as normal. And so then it happens again,” Bednar said. “Unless you reject something fully, immediately, it can become normalized and becomes the new way we engage politically.”

Michigan protesters smashed through social norms with no repercussions this spring. Wednesday’s U.S. Capitol riots took it to the next level.

“Time and time again there has been this push from the right, right up against the boundaries of what is legal – and pushing through the boundaries of what is normatively acceptable,” Bednar said. “That’s the context that leads up to Wednesday, where they physically broke through all of the boundaries.”

There’s more pretext to Wednesday’s riot than what happened in Michigan this spring. But there are clear parallels in imagery, Bednar said.

Both had unruly, armed protesters inside Capitol buildings. And U.S. Capitol protesters flew confederate flags – another potential “How it started/How it’s going” meme, Bednar said, thinking back to when State Sen. Dale Zorn, R-Ida, wore a confederate flag mask during session this spring.

Michigan’s protests were the legal-but-objectionable appetizer to Wednesday’s insurrection.

“I can’t say that this is directly connected,” Bednar said. “But we see these links.”

Some protestors linked to kidnapping plot

Count Gov. Gretchen Whitmer among those who sees shades of the D.C. riot in events that unfolded in Michigan, including a plot to kidnap her.

“Anyone who was paying attention saw this play out in Michigan, eight, nine months ago. I called on Donald Trump, I called and spoke directly to Mike Pence, I called on Republican leaders in Michigan, ‘We have to bring the heat down.’ The death threats were rolling in and none of them did a darn thing,” Whitmer said on MSNBC after the capitol protest last week.

“Months later, the very people that stormed our Capitol with long guns and automatic rifles … some of those very people were implicated in the plot to kidnap and kill me.”

It was on Oct. 8 the public learned of the alleged kidnapping plot. According to the FBI, the group planned to kidnap Whitmer and leave her in a boat in Lake Michigan. They went so far as to order explosives and scope out a bridge near her cabin, federal prosecutors allege.

So far, 14 people have been charged in connection with the alleged plot.

Much like now, Republican leaders condemned the plot while simultaneously distancing themselves from it.

After the news broke, Trump complained that Whitmer didn’t give him credit for thwarting the operation. While Whitmer saw his rhetoric as a contributing factor, Trump and Republicans didn’t see it that way. They never advocated for kidnapping, after all.

House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, supported various protests against the governor and spoke at one the same day the plot was revealed.

After the plot against her was revealed, Whitmer said words matter and leaders who stoked and contributed to hate speech were complicit.

This week after the Capitol riot, she told MSNBC, “You can’t fan the flames of hatred and throw gas on them, and then show up later with a bucket of water and pretend like you’ve been on the right side the whole time.”

Perpetuating “The Big Lie”

Political rhetoric nationwide escalated to scathing levels as Election Day approached. But unlike past years, the rhetoric didn’t tone down once the votes were counted.

Despite losing Michigan by roughly 150,000 votes, Trump refused to concede. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel vowed in a Michigan press conference three days after the election that “the fight is not over.”

Trump laid the groundwork for fraud allegations prior to the election, sowing doubt about absentee voting. His team launched dozens of failed lawsuits in the days after the election, propped up by state Republican leaders.

Despite courts striking down accusations of widespread voter fraud, Republican leaders in Michigan and across the country perpetuated the myth.

It’s a textbook case of a propaganda-driven concept called, “The Big Lie,” said Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, a political science professor at Wayne State University.

“The way “The Big Lie’ works is, you tell the public something false and you get them to believe it – like, ‘the election was stolen,’” Sarbaugh-Thompson said. “Then, because the public believes it, you claim we have to investigate this because the public has concerns. Well, the public has concerns because you told them ‘The Big Lie.’”

Michigan Republicans played their part. State lawmakers and Congressmembers joined on the failed Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn election results because of alleged fraud.

The legislature held extensive hearings featuring testimony of alleged voter fraud that had largely already been debunked in court cases.

“You have to conclude, at some point, that people are knowingly lying to the public,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said.

As the failed lawsuits piled up, some Michigan Republicans conceded that Biden won and urged Trump to give it up. Others doubled down on the accusations.

Jan. 6, 2021: The day tensions boiled over

On Wednesday, Jan. 6, pro-Trump protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol under the pretense that the election was rigged.

Five people died. It was the first breach of the building since 1814, when the British troops set the Capitol on fire during the War of 1812.

Members of Congress went into hiding, some blocking doors with furniture. Proud protesters vandalized the historic building, rummaging through offices, collecting keepsakes and etching “Murder the Media” into an exterior door.

In a political landscape where nothing is unanimous, Democrats and Republicans alike spoke out condemning the violence. And eventually, they returned to certify the election in favor of Biden, even though a few Republicans still objected.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s chaos, the brunt of the blame has been heaped on Trump. Even Betsy DeVos turned on him, resigning as education secretary because of Trump’s “behavior” and “rhetoric.”

Incoming U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Grand Rapids called out his Republican colleagues in his first week on the job, saying they need “to own up for the lies and deceptions we’ve been telling some of our supporters.”

“I hope that some of the disingenuous, duplicitous and deceptive rhetoric that folks have latched on, to try to feel better about what happened – I hope they realize the utter cowardice of that approach,” Meijer said.

Timeline design by Scott Levin | slevin@mlive.com

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