AOC said she doubts Biden’s win would have been certified if GOP controlled the House

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Friday expressed doubt that the House would have certified President Biden’s election in January if Republicans held the majority in the chamber. 

During a virtual town hall with fellow New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D) that was largely focused on public safety amid the rise in violent crime in New York City, an attendee during the Q&A portion of the event asked the lawmakers how House Republicans who voted against the certification of Biden’s win will be held accountable. 

Dozens of House Republicans in January voted to challenge a slate of electors for Biden based on unsupported claims of widespread fraud, just hours after hundreds of people violently stormed the Capitol to protest the election results. 

In response to the participant’s question, Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) Thursday announcement of a special congressional committee to investigate the mob attack, including the timeline of the events and whether any lawmakers played a role in the riot. 

Ocasio-Cortez said Friday that the commission “is extraordinarily important in order for us to get that accountability.” 

“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 sizable amount of Republican members to do the right thing,” the congresswoman said.

“And what we’ve seen in some of their votes is that many of them will fall in line, even when they know it’s the wrong thing to do,” she added. 

“If, for example, there was a Republican majority in the House, we do not know what would have happened in terms of certification of election results,” Ocasio-Cortez argued. 

The congresswoman went on to say that she believed some Republicans were opposed to the creation of a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot because “there are likely members that don’t want to see some of these facts come to light and corroborate it.” 

“I do believe that the commission, it’s not a gesture. It is a serious investigation so that we can finally corroborate some of these facts,” she added. 

The commission comes after Senate Republicans last month blocked the establishment of an independent panel to conduct the probe based on the commission established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

Several GOP lawmakers have continued to downplay the Jan. 6 violence, which was spurred by former President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of a stolen 2020 presidential election. 

Last month, Republicans during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing expressed doubt about the severity of the mob attack, with Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) saying, “if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from Jan. 6, you’d think it was a normal tourist visit.”

More than 500 people have now been charged with crimes in connection with the insurrection, during which multiple people died and dozens of others were injured.