Ex-GOP Speaker Ryan denounces effort to challenge Electoral College results

Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Sunday blasted Congressional Republicans’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory strike at the foundation of our republic. It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Ryan said in a statement.

“The Trump campaign had ample opportunity to challenge election results, and those efforts failed from lack of evidence,” the statement continues. “The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate.”

The Trump campaign and its allies’ have attempted numerous legal challenges to the election results, all of which have been unsuccessful in undoing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, including two lawsuits rejected by the Supreme Court.

Ryan, who was Speaker for the first two years of Trump’s term, has largely avoided weighing in on current events since leaving office, but did previously call on the president to accept the results of the election in late November, during a period when the General Services Administration was refusing to sign off on the transition.

“I think maybe even more important is that these legal challenges to the outcome and the attacks on our voting system really need to stop, in my opinion,” Ryan said then at a virtual Bank of America conference. “The outcome will not be changed, and it will only serve to undermine our faith in our system of government, our faith in our democracy.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who named Ryan his running mate in the 2012 presidential election, has also been critical of an effort by 12 GOP senators and more than 100 House Republicans to overturn the result.

The Utah Republican joined a bipartisan group of 10 senators in declaring that “the election is over.“

“At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans’ confidence in the already determined election results,” they said in a joint statement.