GOP Officials Disavow ‘Treasonous’ Election Interference By Feds

In the years since the 2016 presidential race, conservatives have increasingly spoken out against federal intrusion in the U.S. election process. 

One primary source of outrage on the right hinges on the since-debunked theory that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had colluded with Russian operatives to increase his chances of victory against Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.

The narrative was widely reported in the media and became a dark cloud that hovered over Trump’s term in the White House.

As the 2024 presidential election begins to take shape, a number of prominent Republicans are amplifying their calls for reform. Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner recently issued separate statements that touched on many of the same concerns.

In response to the recent report by Special Counsel John Durham that found the FBI mishandled its probe into Russian collusion claims, Ashcroft concluded that the behavior resembled “what you expect out of a banana republic.”

He went on to call the federal intervention into the election “a direct attack on a foundational aspect of our country” and determined that government entities have collectively become “the largest purveyor of misinformation and disinformation with regard to election” in recent years. 

In his own statement, Warner marveled at the “extraordinary” evidence uncovered in Durham’s report, noting that he could not think of another point in the nation’s history during which “our own federal agencies have gotten involved in an election to the point of lying to the American people to sway the outcome.”

Warner also pointed to the most recent presidential election, during which evidence shows that federal officials put forth a coordinated effort to protect Democratic nominee Joe Biden by claiming that damning evidence found on his son’s abandoned laptop was actually part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

“Using the word treason is not out of context,” he concluded. “It’s treasonous when you betray your own, and this [was] a betrayal by our own people. These agencies are supposed to protect us, and [yet] they are the ones who are perpetrating this fraud on the American people. You just can’t get any more insidious or dangerous than that.”