Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) raised the specter of an even bigger political mess months ago when she indicated that the presidential election victory of Joe Biden likely would not have been certified by a House of Representatives controlled by Republicans.
“I thank heavens that we had a Democratic majority in the House that day because, frankly, if we didn’t, we would have to be relying on a very sizable amount of Republican members to do the right thing,” she said Friday at a virtual town hall meeting with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.).
“What we’ve seen in some of their votes [by Republicans] is that many of them will fall in line, even when they know it’s the wrong thing to do,” she added. “If ... there was a Republican majority in the House, we do not know what would have happened in terms of certification of election results.”
Eight GOP senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the election for Biden as they sought to hand Donald Trump the presidency, despite American voters’ clear decision.
Other Republican senators had earlier planned to vote against certifying the electoral vote for Biden, but changed their minds after they were rattled by the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 to disrupt the proceedings.
Ocasio-Cortez also said that the decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to create a special congressional committee to investigate the Capitol insurrection was “extraordinarily important” to establish accountability.
The committee will conduct a “serious investigation so that we can finally corroborate some of these facts” about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Pelosi announced the creation of the committee Thursday after Senate Republicans last month blocked the establishment of an independent panel to conduct the probe.
Check out the full virtual town hall meeting in the video up top. Ocasio-Cortez talks about the dangers a GOP House could have caused at approximately 1:01:35.
