Over $800,000 in taxpayers’ money was spent on legal efforts by the Democratic Party to overturn an election for the House of Representatives last year, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The election took place in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district, where Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks narrowly defeated Democrat Rita Hart by a margin of just six votes, out of nearly 400,000 votes cast. Hart refused to concede even after an official recount, after which the office of Iowa’s Secretary of State certified the results in favor of Miller-Meeks.
Earlier this year, Democrats utilized the power of the Committee on House Administration to formally challenge the results of the close election. The Democratic majority on the committee paid law firm Jenner & Block approximately $699,294 to attempt to overturn the results of the election. In response, the Republican minority paid another law firm, Jones Day, around $126,942 to defend the results of the election. These totals were revealed by committee records that are freely available to the public.
In addition to the amounts spent on the services of the rival law firms, the committee’s ranking Republican member says that additional costs of challenging the election were not taken into account in the congressional records.
“At the end of the day, more than a million in taxpayer dollars will have been wasted on Speaker Pelosi’s efforts to steal an election in order to grow her majority,” said ranking member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), pointing to additional costs such as the salaries of all the staffers who also worked on the process.
“Iowa’s process was bipartisan, transparent, timely, and the outcome was never in doubt,” Davis continued. “This contest should have never been filed and Democrats on this committee should have dismissed it before a penny of tax dollars went to any law firm.”
The decision to challenge the election with taxpayer funding was made by the committee’s chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who declined to comment. Lofgren’s efforts were publicly supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who subsequently faced accusations of hypocrisy from members of both parties, after she criticized President Donald Trump’s efforts to combat more widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Although there is overwhelming evidence of fraud at the presidential level in numerous key swing states, there was never any proof of fraud in the Iowa race. Rita Hart ultimately dropped her challenge to the election on March 31st.