WASHINGTON – It’s a pretty simple question: Did Donald Trump lose the presidential election in 2020?
The answer is yes, clearly. Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Trump has always, to put it lightly, had difficulty accepting this basic fact. And refusing to acknowledge it now appears to be a basic condition for securing Trump’s appointment to a powerful government post, with dozens of his nominees twisting themselves in knots to avoid saying he lost in 2020.
All 40 of his nominees to lifetime federal judgeships so far have given misleading or false responses to questions about the 2020 election in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group, has been analyzing judicial nominees’ written responses to questions from senators on the panel and found they are nearly identical in their strangely worded, evasive characterizations of the election.
All have been directly asked by the committee, “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Instead of just saying yes, they have either pointed to Biden’s “certification” by Congress or said Biden “served” as president. Both responses allow them to skip the part about Biden actually winning the election and move on to him simply becoming president.
This is the same tactic Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long used to avoid publicly contradicting Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
“Our theory from the beginning was that this was a litmus test for Trump,” Josh Orton, Demand Justice’s president, told HuffPost. “These district judges are announced on Truth Social; they know they could have their nominations pulled just as quickly on Truth Social.”
Orton is referring to Trump’s social media website, where he randomly makes major news or has full-blown meltdowns in the middle of the night.
Judicial nominees’ refusals to plainly state that Biden won in 2020 “is the show of their loyalty to Trump,” he added, “their willingness to continue this lie about losing the 2020 election and attempting to overthrow the government.”
Trump’s court picks have also been avoiding another basic question: “Was the U.S. Capitol attacked by a violent mob on January 6, 2021?” None of Trump’s 40 court picks have said yes, per Demand Justice’s analysis, with the vast majority characterizing the violence of that day as “a political debate” or “political issue.”
One of Trump’s now-confirmed judges, Maria Ann Lanahan, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, offered an even more bizarre response: “I was not present at the U.S. Capitol at the time. I do not have personal knowledge of the details.”
OK! Here’s some easy-to-find and nightmarish footage if she’s confused.
Senate Judiciary Committee
The question of whether Trump lost the 2020 election has begun spilling over into hearings with some of his nominees to high-level administration posts, and they’ve given the same contorted answers. Last month, during his confirmation hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin squirmed his way out of giving a direct response.
“Who won the 2020 election?” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) asked him.
“Ma’am, we know that President Joe Biden was sworn into office,” Mullin replied. “He was the president for the last four years.”
The same thing happened again this week, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) posed the question to Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to the Federal Reserve.
“Mr. Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” she asked.
“Uh, we try to keep politics, if I’m confirmed, out of the Federal Reserve,” Warsh said.
“I’m just asking a factual question,” she interjected. After some back and forth, Warsh dodged the question again: “I believe that this body certified this election many years ago.”
The avoidance of this question has become such a trend among Trump’s nominees going before the Senate Judiciary Committee that its chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), addressed it head-on at the start of a hearing last week. Except he brought it up to criticize Democrats for having “relentlessly attacked” the president’s court picks over it.
“Under our constitutional system, whoever is certified as receiving the majority vote from the Electoral College is the winner of the election,” Grassley said. “Not accepting this basic principle of our Constitution, some of my Democratic colleagues have followed up with political theater, asking who won the popular vote in these elections.”
He said Democrats asking judicial nominees who won the popular vote in 2020 was particularly silly because, “of course, none of the nominees counted ballots.”
Orton laughed at the Republican chair’s defense.
“You can tell what a problem it’s become if Grassley is trying to prebut it before the questions start,” he said. “Even by his standard, those nominees have failed. He said the winner was the one who got the most electoral votes, not the one who Congress certifies.”
In that same hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the top Democrat on the panel, went on to press another judicial nominee, U.S. appeals court nominee Justin Smith, about whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Smith repeatedly gave convoluted answers that avoided answering the question.
“Will you acknowledge that President Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden?” Durbin asked.
“The Electoral College cast their votes in December of 2020,” Smith replied. “In January of 2021, Congress met to open and count those votes, and as a result of that process, Congress certified Joe Biden as the president.”
“Who won the popular vote in the 2020 election?” Durbin pressed.
“I want to be very clear that, as a lawyer, looking at the Constitution, it’s the Electoral College that matters, and that process played forth in December of 2020 and January of 2021,” Smith said.
The Illinois senator had had enough.
“At some point, there is going to be a video I’m sure that will be released [in] which we’ll watch the painful explanation by every nominee from the Trump White House for the federal bench as to why they couldn’t answer the basic question every single person in this room knows is true,” Durbin said.
“Donald Trump lost the election in 2020 to Joe Biden. He may have regretted it. He may have denied it, but it’s a fact,” he added. “The reason we continue to engage in these political gymnastics is a question about whether or not you can ever say no to Donald Trump when it comes to any future service. And that is a basic concern.”