Republican Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, left, poses with Donald Trump Jr. during a campaign event at Stoney’s Rockin’ Country Friday, June 10, 2022.
Saturday, June 11, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Leading Republicans in Nevada, many of whom are promoting false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, weren’t commenting on findings revealed Thursday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The first public hearing to bring to light evidence of the yearlong investigation presented testimony showing former President Donald Trump and his inner circle continuing to look for ways to overturn President Joe Biden’s win, even after they could not find sufficient evidence of election fraud.
The committee used testimony from people like Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, who testified that he told Trump the claims of a rigged election were “bull---” and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, saying she respected Barr and “accepted what he was saying,” as evidence that Trump knew the election was not stolen but continued to tout the claims anyway, leading to the violent insurrection at the Capitol.
Alex Cannon, one of Trump’s campaign lawyers, told the former White House chief of staff that they “weren’t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states,” Cannon testified.
Yet, despite all this, many Republicans are still parroting the line that the election was stolen from Trump.
Following the Thursday hearing, Trump went on a rant on his “Truth” social media app, calling Barr a “coward” and a “weak and frightened” attorney general who was afraid of being impeached. He also said Ivanka Trump “had long since checked out” and was “only trying to be respectful” to Barr.
“I never wavered one bit,” Trump said. “Follow the facts and proof. The 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen.” He called it the “crime of the century” and a “one-sided witch hunt.”
Many Republicans running for office in Nevada have touted and continue to tout those claims of election fraud and election insecurity. When asked by the Sun if the Thursday hearing changed any of their stances, they were silent.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is looking to oust Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in November, is the face of the election fraud claims in Nevada. As co-chair of Trump’s campaign in Nevada, he filed numerous lawsuits touting claims that the election was stolen and that mail-in ballots were submitted fraudulently.
Those claims have been proven false in court challenges, and Nevada’s Republican secretary of state has assured the public the election was free and fair and untainted by meaningful fraud. In Nevada, Biden won by about 30,000 votes.
Laxalt’s campaign did not return requests for comment for the story.
The campaign for Nevada gubernatorial candidate Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who recently received Trump’s endorsement, declined to comment for the story.
He previously has told news outlets that he saw no evidence of fraud and that Biden is the rightfully elected president, but he still thinks the elections are insecure.
He plans to introduce an election reform package, according to his website, that “protects the integrity of our elections.”
The package will aim to eliminate ballot harvesting, end universal mail ballots, require voter ID, and create a bipartisan panel to oversee elections that are controlled by single-party rule.
In a November interview with Dennis Silvers, Lombardo said, “We’re represented with the situation, ‘Do you believe in the last election, there was integrity with it?’ I believe the integrity was questioned, but the important piece is to move forward from that. How can we fix it going into the future?”
Gubernatorial candidate and Reno attorney Joey Gilbert has more clearly laid out where he stands on the 2020 election, repeatedly touting the rigged-election claims. He also was one of the protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although he was originally there for a medical tyranny conference, he previously told the Sun.
“I don’t regret it,” he said in a previous interview with the Sun. “I’m not trying to minimize it. I was there. I absolutely went up and participated in the singing of the national anthem. … I don’t know what happened and what went on there. All I know is what I saw with my own eyes, and not a single officer was harmed, not a single vehicle was harmed. And again, I absolutely disavow and think that anybody that went in there and caused any harm, that you broke the law.”
Gilbert’s spokesperson Paul White said he does not think Gilbert would change his stances following the Thursday Jan. 6 hearing and that Gilbert was busy with his campaign so could not respond.
Republican Congressional District 1 candidate Carolina Serrano called the Jan. 6 Committee hearings a “BlueAnon Superbowl” on Twitter.
Very few people are going to change their minds based on anything they see, said Kenneth Miller, assistant professor of political science at UNLV.
“They have no interest in angering their base supporters,” Miller said. “I wouldn’t think they’d be too interested in chiming in on it today.”
The hearings are also ongoing, so candidates may be waiting to see how things will play out, Miller said.
The hearing Thursday was broadcast on most major news channels, with the exception of Fox News, and more than 19 million people tuned in, according to the New York Times. The second hearing will take place 10 a.m. EST Monday.
