Josh Hawley Is Lying About His Election Stunt

The Missouri senator claims he wasn’t trying to overturn the election results. Really?

Tom Williams/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Josh Hawley isn’t sorry about challenging the result of the 2020 election. In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju on Friday, the Republican senator from Missouri attempted to defend his actions in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, accusing his critics of distorting his words and unfairly villainizing him.

When he challenged the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s Electoral College win in the Senate and voted to reject the results of the election in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Hawley explained Friday, he merely “gave voice” to Missourians who were concerned about allegations of fraud. “I was very clear from the beginning that I was never attempting to overturn the election,” he said.

That is just false. Let’s roll the tape.

On November 6, Hawley appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to call out “deeply disturbing” allegations of election malfeasance by Democrats. “We’ve seen reports in Detroit about ballots brought in there, new ballots in the middle of the night,” Hawley said. “We’ve seen it in Philadelphia.” (Hawley believed these rumors demanded serious investigation, though had he investigated them on Google he would have learned that what was being unloaded in the middle of the night in Detroit was camera equipment.) 

By December 1, Hawley was objecting to fast-tracking the confirmation process on Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees on the grounds that no one could say for sure who the president would be. It would be rash, he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, to do so “before this election has been certified, before the Electoral College has even met, while there are important appeals and legal cases ongoing, including the one involving Pennsylvania that I hope the U.S. Supreme Court will hear.” At least four times in that interview he raised doubts that Biden would actually be sworn in—”if Joe Biden ends up being sworn in as president,” he said; “If Joe Biden ends up as president,” he said; “If Joe Biden—if he is president come January,” he said; “should he actually be sworn in as president,” he said.

That Pennsylvania lawsuit—which called for all ballots cast by mail in the state to be thrown out, in an attempt to overturn the election result in the state through mass disenfranchisement—was rejected by the Supreme Court. When Missouri’s attorney general filed an amicus brief in support of another effort to throw out Pennsylvania’s election results (along with the results of three other states), Hawley cheered that on too. 

Four days after Texas’ Pennsylvania challenge was thrown out (by, among other people, Chief Justice John Roberts, whom Hawley once clerked for), and one day after the Electoral College itself met to formally make Biden president-elect, the result of the election, was still just a known unknown to Josh Hawley.

“If Joe Biden is sworn in as president in January, Big Tech is going to run this administration” he said during another Fox News appearance on December 15.

It was still a big “if.”

People noticed that Hawley was still acting as if the election was up for grabs—he was even asked about it. On January 4, as he prepared to contest the results of the election at the Capitol, Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Hawley very directly to say that the election result would stand.

“Are you trying to say that as of January 20, that President Trump will be president?” Baier asked.

“Well, Bret, it depends on what happens on Wednesday,” Hawley said. “It’s why we have the debate.”

It depends on what happens on Wednesday.

Hawley wasn’t wiling to acknowledge Biden would be president, even as the bleachers were already in place for his inauguration. That’s because the whole point of a stunt like the one he was pulling was the ambiguity of it—to be able to play with fire and get away with it, to raise money and build his brand. He did it under the guise of speaking for (some of) his constituents, but those constituents had been hearing false allegations about election irregularities straight from their senator. In an ideal world, perhaps, everyone else would have simply cooperated with this magic trick and we would have all gotten on with our work without anyone getting killed by a fire extinguisher. But people did take him seriously—a mistake that, as I reported in the magazine, many of his colleagues and past admirers seem determined not to make again.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate