Here’s everything SC’s GOP congressmen said to perpetuate false election fraud narrative
The day after a pro-Trump rally turned violent with marchers assaulting police and breaking into the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham delivered a striking rebuke of the president’s voter fraud claims that had fueled the previous day’s events.
“The people on the campaign legal team have made accusations without sufficient proof. They have been more the problem than the solution,” Graham said during a press conference that Thursday. Graham said he’d repeatedly asked Trump’s team for proof of fraud and they had offered none. And he condemned the violence at the Capitol and called for an end to challenges to Biden’s victory.
The admission was a marked change in messaging from Graham and fellow Republicans, most of whom early on came to Trump’s aid by questioning the integrity of the Nov. 3 election.
Though all of the state’s members of Congress strongly condemned the violence, South Carolina’s Republican congressmen, with few exceptions, repeatedly echoed unproven allegations of voter fraud during the November election, questioned states’ methods of holding elections, wrote letters calling for investigations and filed legislation to change the way the U.S. conducts elections in light of the alleged issues in the 2020 election.
Those allegations, repeatedly shot down by courts, were spread by the president and his allies through the recent Wednesday, when Congress met to certify the Electoral College victory for Biden while, in a park near the White House, President Trump rallied supporters saying he would never concede.
Critics say that rhetoric, often repeated by the president and his allies, inspired rioters to travel to Washington D.C. where many marched to the U.S. Capitol and attempted to take it by storm. And Trump’s words and actions led him to be impeached for a second time Wednesday.
To varying degrees, U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace, Joe Wilson, Jeff Duncan, William Timmons, Ralph Norman and Tom Rice and Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham pushed the president’s election fraud narrative in public comments, press conferences and social media posts.
Mace, Scott and Rice made very few public comments or moves that pushed allegations of widespread fraud, with Mace appearing at one press conference, Scott filing one election integrity bill and Rice signing on to a legal challenge to the results.
On the other hand, certain members of the delegation like Graham, Duncan and Norman regularly used their platforms to cast doubt on the integrity of the election.
In the 64 days between the November election and the Friday after the riot, South Carolina lawmakers publicly questioned the results and the method of conducting the election on at least 31 days, nearly half.
Their questions continued even as courts struck down dozens of legal attempts to thwart Biden’s victory, including rulings against Trump from the U.S. Supreme Court that started in early December. S.C. Republicans continued to press for investigations even beyond an announcement by then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr — who had long been criticized for using his post to help the president — that a Justice Department investigation had turned up no credible evidence of widespread fraud.
And when it was time for Congress to certify Electoral College votes, making Biden’s win official, five of the state’s eight Republican members of Congress voted in support of the objections to the vote count in two swing states that went to Biden.
The State newspaper analyzed the times South Carolina Republicans publicly raised questions about the Nov. 3 election. Here’s what we found:
Questions started early
The state’s GOP members of Congress immediately started raising questions about the outcome of the Nov. 3 election, before the race was called or the votes completely counted.
Graham, who became one of the most prominent players late in 2020, started publicly sowing doubt about the election in the days before a winner was declared. On Nov. 6, he speculated that “systematic voting irregularities” would surface following the election. He also called on Trump to “fight hard” in court and donated $500,000 to his legal defense fund.
As votes were being counted in Pennsylvania, mostly in large cities like Philadelphia, Graham tried to imply there should be questions about the forthcoming results.
“All I can say is that Philadelphia is not the bastion of free and fair elections,” Graham added. “To say that Philadelphia doesn’t have a history of irregularities in voting is denying the obvious but it is incumbent upon the Trump administration to make specific cases of voter irregularity.”
It is unclear what findings of irregularities in Philadelphia exactly Graham is alluding to. However, like many large U.S. cities, Philadelphia did face voter fraud in the early 1900s, largely stopped thanks to election reforms. But in 1993, a federal judge did overturn the results of a state senate election after Democrats forged hundreds of absentee ballots.
Duncan, who represents the 3rd District, also made several claims that fraud had in fact occurred, though he never provided evidence to support his allegations. His objections started Nov. 5, days before the election was called.
“It is a sad day when the threats to our elections come not from outside forces like Russia, Iran, North Korea, or radical Islamic terrorism, but from political operatives within manipulating votes, hindering transparency, and instilling fraud in our free election system,” Duncan tweeted Nov. 5, two days before the first network called the race for Biden.
Duncan maintained since Nov. 5 that Trump was fighting “massive levels of Democratic fraud.” He called for “every illegal vote to be thrown out,” a common phrase among Trump’s supporters. He began calling for an investigation by the Justice Department and the Chief Postal Inspector into alleged irregularities, starting Nov. 6, the day before the election was called.
Norman, too, asserted without offering evidence that there was fraud before votes were even tallied.
The day after Biden was declared the winner, while votes were still being counted in some states, Norman jabbed at Democrats for accepting the results before every ballot was counted and all allegations of fraud investigated.
“After every legal vote is counted; After unlawful votes are thrown out; After provisional ballots are reconciled; After the numerous abnormalities are investigated and fully resolved, then — and only then — will we know who won the Presidency,” Norman tweeted.
Other lawmakers weighed in but stopped short of claiming widespread fraud had in fact occurred.
“The election is not over yet,” Timmons, a Greenville Republican, tweeted Nov. 6. “Voting irregularities and allegations of fraud are serious claims that undermine our electoral process and must be fully vetted. The President has the right to challenge these claims in court just as any candidate for office would.”
When Biden was declared the winner Nov. 7, Wilson — who represents the 2nd District, which includes parts of Richland and Lexington counties — tweeted that the “election isn’t over until every legal ballot is counted,” a line often echoed by the president’s allies.
On the day that Biden was declared the winner by reputable news outlets, Graham, the Senate Judiciary chairman, announced via press release that he received an affidavit from the Trump campaign where a postal worker in Erie, Pennsylvania, said postal officials “hatched a plan to backdate ballots mailed after the election.”
“It is imperative that all credible allegations of voting irregularities and misconduct be investigated to ensure the integrity of the 2020 elections,” Graham said Nov. 7, adding that as the Judiciary chairman, he would take all allegations of fraud seriously.
The postal worker later admitted to federal investigators, to whom it is a crime to lie, that he made up the allegations, signing an affidavit recanting, which was reported on by the Washington Post. The postal worker quickly denied recanting in an online video posted hours after The Washington Post report.
On Nov. 9, Graham urged Trump to exhaust every legal avenue and to run again in 2024 if the election didn’t go his way. The election was “by no means over,” he said.
“All I’m asking people to do is run down every credible allegation of misconduct, look at the computer systems, look at the provisional ballots, then we’ll make a decision, go to court,” Graham said to Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio.
South Carolina’s Republican House members soon moved their election concerns from social media to an in-person event. On Nov. 10, Republican House members, with the exception of Timmons who was on his honeymoon, held a press conference calling for significant election changes and pushing back on the election results.
By then, Trump and his allies had filed a barrage court challenges in swing states, almost all of which would go on to be struck down.
During the press conference, Wilson said he was “concerned and disgusted with the election irregularities and improprieties.” He provided no evidence of election fraud.
Norman held out on accepting Biden as the winner, saying he would wait for all legal options to be exhausted and all votes verified.
“I do not hate Joe Biden. I do not like his policies,” Norman said at the State House press conference. “But that being said, yes we will accept. ... We support an honest process. This process last Tuesday, it needs to be borne out, whether it’s honest or dishonest.”
On Nov. 11, 30 state lawmakers issued a letter saying they supported a federal investigation into allegations of voting irregularities.
Through late November and December, members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation kept pushing the narrative on social media and during interviews.
In the days between the press conference and last week’s riot, Norman continued to call for “every lawful vote” to be counted. He repeated Dec. 9 that “tens of millions of voters are wondering if there was widespread fraud in the November election,” as more and more judges turned away legal challenges to the election by Trump and his allies.
On Dec. 14, days after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down court challenges over Pennsylvania’s election outcome, Wilson and Norman appeared in person as South Carolina’s electoral votes were cast. Again, Norman told a State reporter he wasn’t ready to acknowledge Biden yet as president-elect because Trump has not conceded and may still fight on in court. Wilson and Norman became the first of South Carolina’s delegation to signal publicly they were considering objecting to the electoral college certification of Biden’s win.
“What we want is a fair election, and I’ll be signing on to (an objection) when we have a senator and a House member that objects,” Norman said.
When Barr says no fraud, some in SC balk
Members of South Carolina’s delegation called for investigations into the unfounded allegations of voter fraud — some even after the president’s appointed attorney general reported that a Justice Department investigation found no evidence.
On Dec. 1, then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, announced that a Justice Department investigation had turned up no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Barr’s conclusion immediately faced attacks from Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and, among others, some South Carolina representatives.
Duncan tweeted Dec. 3 that “the lack of action .... is not only disappointing, but completely unacceptable,” and vowed to continue to “fight to uphold election integrity.”
About a week later, Duncan and Norman signed a letter to Trump calling for an appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations of election irregularities. They were also part of a push to get congressional leadership to hold “evidentiary and other hearings necessary to fully investigate and probe the anomalies of the 2020 general election.”
“We are continuing the fight for election integrity,” Duncan tweeted Dec. 18 alongside the letter.
Just four days earlier, on Dec. 14, Trump announced on Twitter that Barr had resigned and would leave his post later that month.
Legal and legislative action
Members of South Carolina’s legislative delegation signed on to support multiple legal challenges to the election results.
Duncan, Norman, Rice, Timmons and Wilson signed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the lawsuit filed by Texas to stop certain swing states from a casting electoral votes to go forward.
“People across the U.S. are concerned about the mishandling of votes and irregularities in the 2020 federal election,” Wilson tweeted Dec. 10. “I share this concern which is why I joined my colleagues, led by @RepMikeJohnson, in filing an amicus brief that expresses this concern.”
“Right now, the collective response on the 2020 election from Democrats and mainstream media is ‘it was good enough for us’ or ‘there may be some discrepancies but not enough to change the outcome, so let’s move on,’ ” Norman tweeted Dec. 11. “I reject both of those responses.”
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, Joe Wilson’s son, signed on to an amicus brief in the lawsuit as well, something Duncan and Graham celebrated.
The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit outright on Dec. 11.
Duncan and Norman also signed a brief in support of U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly’s election lawsuit in Pennsylvania. In the lawsuit, Kelly alleges that the state legislature and the governor violated that state’s constitution when they allowed no-excuse mail-in voting.
“Proud to be one of 28 Members of Congress supporting this lawsuit challenging the legality of Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting program. I will continue doing everything in my power to fight for election integrity!” Duncan tweeted Dec. 28.
The lawsuit was thrown out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which argued the plaintiffs, who filed suit in late November and asked the court to disenfranchise more than 2 million voters, should have brought the suit before the election instead of after voters had expressed their will, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Members of the delegation also supported legislation that would change the way the United States conducts elections.
Norman filed a bill Dec. 14 “to reinforce the pillars of our federal elections,” that included measures like requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, photo ID requirements, strengthening requirements for voting by mail, improving voter verification for mail-in ballots and increasing penalties for fraud. The bill was cosponsored by Wilson, Duncan, Timmons and Rice.
“This election has shown me the need to address our federal voting laws, and I want to thank the other Republicans from the South Carolina delegation to the House of Representatives for co-sponsoring this as well as their leadership on this important issue,” Norman said in a statement.
Graham goes to bat, takes hands on approach
In addition to amplifying allegations of voter fraud, Graham <took other steps to aid Trump’s effort to thwart Biden’s win.
On Nov. 13, the Washington Post reported that Georgia’s Secretary of State accused Graham of calling him to question the validity of legally cast absentee votes. Brad Raffensperger said Graham questioned him about whether Raffensperger had the power to toss out all mail-in ballots in counties with high rates of non-matching voter signatures. Graham denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous.”
The contents of the call were repeated by one of Raffensperger’s staffers on CNN.
On Nov. 19, an ethics complaint was filed against Graham over the call.
Afterward, Graham spent much of his time advocating for changes to the way Georgia conducts its elections. He called for an audit of signatures on mail-in ballots, and voiced support for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s attempts to secure one.
“Must have audit of mail-in ballot signatures to have confidence in the presidential election outcome in Georgia!” he tweeted Dec. 7.
As Georgia launched a signature match audit in Cobb County, which went for Biden 221,846 votes to 165,459, Graham called for an audit of Fulton and Clayton counties, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area which have been credited with delivering the state to Biden in the eleventh hour. Graham tweeted that “many believe Fulton and Clayton counties are the most suspect.”
An audit was not conducted in those counties.
Quieter protests
While some Palmetto State congressmen posted loudly, often questioning the election, others were more reserved in expressing their concerns.
For example, Mace — who won election to the House in November and was sworn in this month — made few comments about election irregularities, but she appeared at a State House press conference on Nov. 10, where she and other House Republicans pushed support for President Donald Trump’s legal challenges and voiced support for resolutions that would change the way elections are conducted.
At the event, Mace said ending the election “irregularities” shouldn’t be a partisan issue, and the “American system of voting is only as good as the public’s confidence in it.”
Scott also made few public comments about alleged issues with the election. On Nov. 6, he tweeted that “every legally cast vote should be ... counted.”
“Any voting irregularities and allegations of fraud must be thoroughly vetted and investigated, and I would encourage anyone with concrete evidence of either to come forward,” Scott tweeted Nov. 6. “This week has shown us that transparency must be increased — for example, the situation in Philadelphia limiting poll watchers’ access is concerning.”
Allegations that Republican poll watchers were illegally barred from election sites have been debunked. However, when the Trump campaign sued for the right to have poll watchers inside the city’s satellite elections offices, a judge turned them down, saying the offices do not qualify as polling places and therefore no one was allowed to enter.
Scott also introduced a bill Jan. 6 ahead of the riot that would establish an “election integrity commission.”
“We cannot move forward without looking back and scrutinizing the issues that led to millions of Americans losing trust in our election system,” Scott said in an accompanying statement. “While every election has a modicum of fraud, the circumstances around the pandemic led multiple states to make rushed and perhaps ill-planned changes to their election systems weeks ahead of the presidential election. Simply put, Congress needs to act in a bipartisan fashion to examine the missteps—intentional or not—made this year in state legislatures across the country.”
Rice too refrained from making several public comments about election fraud. He did, however, sign on to a lawsuit aimed at tossing the election results and supported legislation to make major election changes. Rice also ultimately voted in favor of objections to the certification of electoral college votes in two swing states than went for Biden.
Days before the Capitol riot
As the last hurdle to Biden’s win confirmation approached, several members of South Carolina’s delegation made it clear they planned to object to the certification of electoral college votes in swing states that went for the Democrat.
On Dec. 30, Duncan became one of the first members of the U.S. House to say he would object, citing concerns over alleged election irregularities.
“The 2020 election saw unprecedented institutional issues like states changing their voting systems in violation of their state constitutions, unelected bureaucrats changing election law instead of lawmakers themselves, poll watchers prohibited from doing their jobs, failure to properly scrutinize the validity of mail-in voting, and the list goes on,” Duncan said in a statement.
The next day, Dec. 31, Wilson became the second congressman from South Carolina to announce his plans to object.
“As a former Lexington County Election Commissioner, not just as a Member of Congress, I am disgusted at the irregularities in the 2020 presidential election,” Wilson said in a statement, again providing no evidence of fraud.
Norman followed Wilson hours later, alleging election fraud.
On Fox News, Norman said Republicans would “win” at the electoral college certification hearing by “showing the public what went on.”
“We cannot have fraud in the elections. We’re going to turn out to be another Venezuela or Cuba if we don’t fight it,” Norman said. “I know this, if we do nothing, we’re definitely not going to do anything or show the people what actually happened on Nov. 3. That’s our duty. That’s the reason that we fight.”
After several lawsuits filed by the president’s supporters failed and Biden inched closer and closer to a certified win, Timmons announced early this year that he would object to the electoral college certification. The Greenville Republican claimed that in the run-up to the election, “big money funded, special interest, liberal elites intentionally and systematically sought to use state and federal judges to manipulate the election laws in swing states in a manner that reduced the requirements for voter registration, identification, and verification.”
On Jan. 4, Rice said he wouldn’t decide whether to object to the certification of electoral college votes in some swing states that went for Biden until the day of the vote itself. He called the plans to object “a guaranteed failure of a symbolic gesture.”
“I share the frustrations of many of you on the apparent improprieties in some states in the presidential election,” he added.
Ultimately, Rice voted to object to the certification of Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s results. A week later, though, the congressman stunned the state by crossing party lines to vote to impeach Trump for “inciting an insurrection” on Jan. 6.
Ahead of Congress’ joint session Jan. 6, Duncan and Wilson, along with and 35 other Republican congressmen, issued a statement on the vote, arguing that state officials other than the legislature illegally changed voting laws in several swing states.
“That usurpation of the legislatures’ sole authority, delegated by the Constitution, was a primary reason why the election of 2020 became riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities,” the statement read.
Some SC Republicans change minds
In the days leading up to the electoral college certification, some South Carolina leaders did soften their tones, noting the futility and constitutional impossibility of Congress overturning the election and also signaling that Trump’s efforts to prove fraud had turned up no evidence.
Mace told newspapers and posted on social media Dec. 31 that she would not object to the certification of a Biden win. “I do not believe that Congress knows better,” Mace said.
She was joined by Scott, who said there was “no constitutionally viable means for Congress to overturn an election.”
“Republican governors and Republican controlled state legislatures across the country have upheld the results of their individual states’ elections,” Scott said in a statement. “States have initiated recounts and audits with no significant change to the election results. The Electoral College has certified its results and still other judges, including judges and justices nominated by President Trump, have ended or declined to assert jurisdiction over these legal challenges.”
“I am, and will forever be, open, interested, and desirous to see any new and credible evidence,” he added.
Though Graham always asserted that Trump’s team needed to show evidence of fraud, his marked shift in tone started in January. On Jan. 3, he tweeted an article about a GOP effort to start an election commission, adding that proposing one at this date “is not effectively fighting for President Trump,” calling the move “a political dodge.”
“I do look forward to hearing from and will listen closely to the objections of my colleagues in challenging the results of this election,” Graham tweeted. “They will need to provide proof of the charges they are making. They will also need to provide clear and convincing evidence that the failure to act — in both the state and federal courts and the states legislatures which investigated these claims — was made in error. They will also need to show that the failure to take corrective action in addressing election fraud changed the outcome of these states’ votes and ultimately the outcome of the election.”
Graham signaled his opposition to the objections in the days before Congress’ vote, saying Jan. 3 it had “zero chance of becoming reality.” Still, he said he would “listen closely” as his colleagues made their case for why electoral college votes shouldn’t be certified in some states due to unproven claims of massive voter fraud.
It took until after his evacuation from the U.S. Capitol, as rioters stormed the building, for Graham, the president’s staunchest ally, to significantly change his tone on the allegations.
“Are there irregularities in this election? Yes, I’m sure there are. Have they been overblown? Absolutely,” Graham said during a press conference at the Capitol. “There has been a constant effort by people from the president’s legal team to provide disinformation, to distort the facts. To make accusations that cannot be proven. That needs to stop.”
But when a reporter asked if Graham felt he had any responsibility in the tensions caused by election fraud allegation because the Seneca Republican didn’t acknowledge Biden’s win for more than a month, Graham went on defense.
“From the time the race was called, I was hounded. ‘Why didn’t you say that Biden won?’” Graham said. “You wanted me to declare Biden the winner before President Trump had the right to go to court and exercise the same right other presidents have had.”
Doubling down after national disaster
While some of South Carolina’s congressional delegation members softened, another doubled down.
As rioters ransacked the nation’s Capitol building, Duncan tweeted that while he condemned the violence, he empathized “with many of these protester’s concerns on how our national elections were conducted.”
When lawmakers were allowed to return to Congress late Wednesday night to continue business, many softened their rhetoric or withdrew their objections to the election results in the wake of the riot.
Among those moving away from the president’s side was Graham, who did not support objections to electoral college votes and called Biden “the legitimate president of the United States.
“Enough’s enough. We gotta end it,” Graham said.
Duncan, though, was among a group of House Republicans who charged on with allegations of election irregularities. At about 1:15 a.m. Thursday, as the vote count neared its end, Duncan took the House podium to excuse Pennsylvania officials of using COVID-19 as an excuse to “circumvent” election laws.
On Thursday after the vote, Duncan again doubled down on allegations of election irregularity.
“The assault on the Capitol did not change the substance of the issues at hand,” Duncan said in a statement. “And that is why – even after the chaos – I raised objections to electors from certain states that performed elections in clear violation of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. The fact of the matter is that several states conducted elections in direct contradiction to their state laws, state constitutions, and the U.S. Constitution.”
Duncan also addressed criticism he received for his objections.
“A loud minority have called me seditious and a traitor to my country,” Duncan said in a statement. “They have suggested that I and some of my colleagues should be expelled from Congress for signing two amicus briefs in support of election integrity and for voting to object to electors. These accusations are revolting, politically motivated, and frankly, don’t even make sense.”
“I can proudly say I did my duty on the House floor and represented my constituents to the best of my ability by objecting to certain states’ electors,” he added.
This story was originally published January 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Here’s everything SC’s GOP congressmen said to perpetuate false election fraud narrative."
