Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who in January declared Joe Biden was the “duly-elected 46th president of the United States” now won’t acknowledge that the president legitimately won last November’s election.
Asked that very question by CNN, Van Drew said in an article published Wednesday: “I am not going to make that determination. But what I do think is that we need to make sure that our election system works right.”
Van Drew, feted by then-President Donald Trump at a January 2020 rally in Wildwood, did not respond to a request for comment from NJ Advance Media.
It’s apparently the first time he publicly questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s win, though he did join most of his fellow House Republicans earlier and tried to overturn the presidential election following Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.
They first asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out millions of Biden votes and then voted to reject the electoral votes in two battleground states after pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Numerous investigations and dozens of federal judges said there was no evidence of significant fraud.
First elected as a Democrat in 2018, Van Drew switched parties after opposing Trump’s first impeachment. He was re-elected as a Republican in 2020 and voted against impeaching Trump a second time.
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.
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