Joe Biden, the president-elect, received 81,283,098 votes in the November election, beating President Donald Trump, who received 74,222,958, by more than seven million. More critically, the Democratic candidate won the Electoral College vote 306 to 232.

● “… Trump and his allies filed at least 60 post-election lawsuits. They’ve lost 59 of these cases, and their one victory involved such a minor matter that it had little impact on the final vote tallies.”

● State and federal officials (including Trump’s Department of Homeland Security) have concluded:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. 

“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

● Bill Barr (before his resignation last month as Trump’s Attorney General) concluded:

To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election. . . .

There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.

And yet, though there are exceptions, much of the leadership of the Republican Party refuses to reject Donald Trump’s lie (“We won the Presidential Election, by a lot.”), while often ducking and dodging to avoid straightforwardly asserting that lie. That middle ground is occupied by men and women who lack the courage of their convictions, or simply lack the principled convictions that elected officials ought to have (including the commitment to honor their oaths of office).

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has recently declared his intention to challenge the election outcome on January 6, when the Congress meets to certify the results of Biden’s Electoral College victory: “Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard. I will object on January 6 on their behalf.”

Hawley does not dispute the outcome. He denies that he is subverting the results of a popular election. Rather, he insists, “My objective in this is, as I’ve said repeatedly, is this is my one opportunity in this process to stand and be heard.”

Senator Ben Sasse suggests: ‘When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one. Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will “look” to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.’

Sasse continues, pointing to “a bunch of ambitious politicians,” without naming the Missouri senator who is widely expected to seek the 2024 GOP nomination for president (if Donald Trump gets out of the way) and engaged in a transparent ploy to gain support from Trump’s base (and perhaps from Trump himself):

The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking – first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress – to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.
Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong – and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.

“Adults don’t…” is an interesting choice of words. But of course Hawley — a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School, who taught law, and served as an appellate litigator and then as Missouri’s Attorney General before his election to the U.S. Senate — is hardly a juvenile or (as Daniel Drezner has dubbed a psychologically damaged Trump) a toddler.

For better or worse, the senator — who has taken aim “at the heart of self-government” — is an adult. What he isn’t is a decent adult. Or at least: not an adult with a decent respect for our country’s democratic institutions, the Constitution, or the rule of law. He is a man so eager to advance his career, to please the base, to exploit partisanship for personal advantage, that he is willing to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The junior senator from Missouri will be joined by ten additional Republican senators:

The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and also includes Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

“When people show you who they are, believe them.” We know who Josh Hawley is. And Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and Steve Daines and John Kennedy and Marsha Blackburn and Mike Braun and Cynthia Lummis and Roger Marshall and Bill Hagerty and Tommy Tuberville.