Georgia Democratic Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis last week said Donald Trump is not a “legitimate” president, and decided to boycott the inauguration, along with over 60 other House Democrats.
Maryland Democratic House member Elijah Cummings attended the inauguration, but nonetheless defended Lewis and others who boycotted, saying in an interview on CNN that “if the public knew what members of Congress knew” about what is in the classified briefing on Russian hacking during the presidential election they would “fully understand.”
Now Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis), in an interview with me on SiriusXM Progress late last week, stated that the briefing was one of the reasons why he decided not to attend the inauguration. He also noted that in other democracies around the world, the election would be “redone” if the same activities took place that are reported in the CIA’s classified briefing.
“Almost all of this will slowly come out as more investigations happen but I think there’s a part that really was at the core of what John Lewis was trying to say,” the openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin recounted. “When he said that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president — I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he was referring to that there are grave questions as to whether or not this was a legitimate election.”
Pocan confirmed that the information to which he is referring is not the same information published in The New York Times last week, which reported on an FBI investigation of Trump campaign staffers having contact with Russian officials. It is information that has not yet been made public, he said.
“When you see the full of extent of this,” he continued, “it’s clearly a very troubling situation. And I think in other countries, from what I understand, if this stuff would have come out, I think they probably would have redone the election. We don’t really have something necessarily in our laws to really look at it the same way given what’s out there. But the fact that [Donald Trump] has so flippantly dismissed the intelligence community — you know I’ve read this, and he’s seen the same thing I’ve seen, and he’s being disingenuous in his response.”
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