Republican congressman warns 'more people will die' over false claims of 2020 election fraud after call for executions airs on pro-Trump media outlet
KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images
- A host on the far-right One America News suggested killing "traitors" over false election fraud claims.
- The network is staunchly pro-Trump and has promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 vote.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
False claims of systemic fraud in the 2020 election will result in blood being spilled, a Republican congressman warned Thursday.
Earlier in the week, the far-right One America News Network aired a segment in which a host erroneously claimed there were people involved in a conspiracy related to the 2020 election. "What happens to them? Well, in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: executions."
There is no evidence of a mass conspiracy around the 2020 election, which President Joe Biden won.
Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who was first elected to the US Congress in 2020, denounced that rhetoric as obscene and dangerous.
"Let me be clear: more people will die [because] of craven propaganda like this," Meijer posted on Twitter. "When there are no arrests [because] this is all a lie," those who believe debunked allegations the election was stolen from ex-President Donald Trump "will take matters into their own hands."
-Rep. Peter Meijer (@RepMeijer) June 24, 2021
OANN is currently acting as a media partner for the partisan "audit" in Maricopa County, Arizona. That effort, led by the private firm Cyber Ninjas on behalf of the state's GOP-led Senate, has been rife with irregularities that mean its findings "should not be trusted," according to a recent review by election experts. President Joe Biden won the county by more than 45,000 votes.
In Michigan, meanwhile, a Republican-led investigation of the 2020 vote this week concluded that there was "no evidence of widespread or systemic fraud." Biden won the state by more than 154,000 votes.
"Sources must lose credibility when it is shown they promote falsehoods, even more when they never take accountability for those falsehoods," Republican state Sen. Ed McBroom, chair of the Senate Oversight Committee, said in a statement.