Texas GOP Chair Denies Calling For Secession: ‘The Real Perpetrators’ Are States Who Broke Election Law

 

The chairman of the Republican Party of Texas is denying claims that he suggested secession after the Supreme Court tossed a lawsuit Texas brought challenging the elections of four other states.

State party Chairman Allen West addressed the controversy that blew up Friday in his “Monday Message” open letter. West said that his original statement never mentioned secession, and that the real dividers are the states that implemented allegedly illegal changes to their election laws ahead of the 2020 election.Texas sued Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania for allegedly making illegal changes to their voting laws ahead of the November election. Texas sought to have the defendants barred from voting in the electoral college over the changes. Six other states joined Texas in the lawsuit.

The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 7-2 vote on Friday. Afterward, West put out a statement saying, “This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far reaching ramification for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”

West defended himself against assertions that he was suggesting that the country should split.

“It was these words, my closing sentence, that sent some into a delusional, apoplectic rage: ‘Perhaps law-abiding States should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution,’” West said. “Oh boy, you would have thought me to be the anti-Christ. But consider those words. They borrow from the same ideas contained in our Preamble to our Constitution of forming a more perfect Union. I am still trying to find where I said anything about ‘secession.’”

West then said that the anger at him over his Friday message was misplaced and should be directed at the states that were listed as defendants in the Texas lawsuit. Not backing down from the allegations made in the dismissed lawsuit, West said that the states’ illegal changes to their voting laws were fracturing the country.

“Truth be told, the real perpetrators of secession are the states, and others, named in the suit by Texas, who enacted illegal and unconstitutional actions resulting in the violation of election laws,” West said.

“I have to ask a simple question: when did it become wrong to follow the law, and ask others to do the same? When did we become so partisan, or even ignorant and incompetent, that we accept a notion that a Union of law-abiding States following the Constitution was seditious? But, a domestic terrorist group like Antifa, or illegally changing election law to the detriment of other states, is not?” West continued.

The Thursday before the suit was tossed, the defendants responded to Texas’ allegations in a series of briefs to the Supreme Court. Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, hit back at Texas claiming that it was the state attempting to usurp the Constitution.

“Texas obviously lacks standing to bring such claims, which, in any event, are barred by laches, and are moot, meritless, and dangerous,” Shapiro wrote. “Texas does not seek to have the Court interpret the Constitution, so much as disregard it.”