Rep. Crenshaw slams congressional push to overturn election as 'deeply unconstitutional'

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Rep. Crenshaw slams congressional push to overturn election as 'deeply unconstitutional'

Republican Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw tells 'America's Newsroom' the Constitution doesn't give Congress power to overturn elections.

Millions of President Trump's supporters who had the false hope that the election could be overturned by Congress were "lied to," Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, told "America's Newsroom" Friday.

The former Navy SEAL slammed a handful of his Republican colleagues for going through "mental gymnastics" to make their argument.

"Your leaders lied to you," Crenshaw told co-host Sandra Smith.

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"The process that we've been using on Jan. 6 is meant to deal in situations in which a state might send you competing slates of electors, which is what happened in 1886 and why they passed Electoral Count Act of 1887. The way it has been used this election, the past election, objections in 2005, is deeply unconstitutional, and if you want to understand why, just look at what happened on Wednesday," Crenshaw said.

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He said he didn't disagree with the objections made or the issue with election integrity but says the remedy attempted Wednesday that Congress overturn electoral votes is "deeply unconstitutional and deeply problematic."

"If you put all the pressure on one body, you're going to see exactly what you saw on Wednesday every four years. The Founders knew this. They were very prophetic. This is why their intention was to not have Congress have any say in the electoral votes," he said.

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Instead, the congressman argued the "hard work" must be done at the state level to win elections.

"You've got to identify what went wrong and how to fix it, and guess what else, you've actually got to persuade your neighbors to vote for it," he said.

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Crenshaw said the integrity of an election must be self-evident, where people are not able to cheat.

He suggests voter ID, signature verification, making sure ballots aren't being sent to the wrong households, limiting mail-in balloting, and other measures so all Americans are able to trust the election outcome.