'Political suicide': Conservative salutes Georgia Republicans who paid 'a steep price' for rejecting Trump’s Big Lie

30 August 2023

Bill Barr sued in a personal capacity as protesters who were gassed seek damages for injuries

In her sweeping criminal indictment, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' alleges that many of former Donald Trump's allies were willing to commit criminal acts in their efforts to help him overturn the 2020 election results in her state. The 18 co-defendants listed in Willis' case range from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John C. Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell.

But not everyone on the right went along with Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both conservative Republicans, pushed back against the Big Lie. So did former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, also a Republican, and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming). Even former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, once considered a Trump loyalist, dismissed Trump's election fraud claims as "b-------."

But Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes, in a column published by The Bulwark on August 30, laments that some Republicans who rejected the Big Lie in 2020 paid a heavy price for it politically.

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"Van Langevelde was a member of Michigan's board of state canvassers, the ministerial body with the sole authority under state law to make Joe Biden's victory over Trump official," Sykes explains. "Republicans were heavily pressuring the young lawyer to block the certification of Biden's victory. He refused…. For Van Langevelde, the decision was political suicide."

Sykes adds that in Arizona, "some" Republicans who accepted President Joe Biden's victory as legitimate "paid a steep price for their resistance" — including former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Bill Gates, a former Maricopa County supervisor who shouldn't be confused with the former Microsoft CEO.

The Never Trumper notes, "Trump targeted him for retribution…. Last year, Bowers was soundly defeated in a GOP primary….. And, after an 'onslaught of harassment and violent threats for certifying the results of the 2020 election,' Gates…. announced that he would not be running for reelection."

Charlie Sykes' full column for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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