David Schweikert Says 'Fact Tree' Determined His Votes on 2020 Election Results

After a mob of Donald Trump supporters infamously stormed the Capitol on January 6 , Republican Arizona Congressman David Schweikert made some seemingly contradictory decisions. He voted to both affirm Arizona's election results in the 2020 presidential race and to challenge the results in Pennsylvania, two states that Democratic President Joe Biden won.

On the same day of the attack on the Capitol, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, who represents Arizona's 4th Congressional District, and Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, both formally objected to Arizona's electoral college votes for President Joe Biden. An objection was also filed by Congressional Republicans against the electoral college votes from Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state that Biden also won. Both objections were voted down, but the process served as a litmus test of loyalty to Trump after his supporters caused a riot and disrupted Congress's certification of the 2020 election results.

Schweikert, who's from Scottsdale and represents Arizona's 6th Congressional District, broke with his fellow Republican representatives from Arizona by voting against the objection to certifying his state's electoral college votes. But he opted to vote in favor of the objection to Pennsylvania's election results.

The congressman's Scottsdale office did not return New Times' initial request for comment on the votes. But at the Arizona GOP's Statutory Meeting in Phoenix on January 23, New Times bumped into the the elusive congressman and asked him for his reasoning behind the two votes that are seemingly at odds with each other.

In regards to his vote on the Pennsylvania-related objection, Schweikert told New Times that he had "spent three days with a bunch of constitutional attorneys" who "laid out the argument that in Pennsylvania the electoral college referral did not properly come through their state legislature."

"We had an entire three, four-inch binder of the fact tree, and they built a great argument on the fact tree," he said.

But Arizona's electoral college votes were apparently legally up to snuff, Schweikert claimed.

"From what we saw, the legislature had properly delegated its authorities," he said. "Congress is not the arbitrator of any other fact than did the electors properly come from the legislature."

Schweikert added that the other Republican representatives from Arizona were also "sitting down with different constitutional experts, but he "saw it through a different lens."

A spokesperson for Schweikert did not respond to New Times' additional request for comment on Schweikert's positions.