Steny Hoyer: “I will tell my friend from California that there would have been far less rancor if this had been a more open process…”

“I will tell my friend from California that there would have been far less rancor if this had been a more open process, and we had felt included in this process. I think I have the reputation of being a fair Member who can work with both sides of the aisle. I value that reputation and I value that mode of operating. But I will tell my friend that there are clearly some erroneous things that are being said on this floor: 748 illegal votes. Nobody on this floor knows that there are 748 illegal votes that were cast in this election. I guarantee it. I guarantee it as someone who has worked pretty hard on this case, who has read all the precedents, who has read not the majority report, because I just received it at 10 minutes of 10:00, but read all our report, all our lawyers' reports, and investigated as much as I could with the time I had available on matches of signatures. We believe that there is a general issue here, but that, very frankly, the House has been hurt in the attempt to establish a new precedent with respect to the level of credible evidence necessary to get a Member to the time when they have to respond to as prolonged and expensive contest as this has been.”