- Ryan said Trump lost the 2020 election as Wisconsin GOP leaders investigated the results.
- Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is pursuing an open-ended investigation and audit of the race.
- “He exhausted his cases. He exhausted the court challenges,” Ryan said of Trump’s election loss.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan reiterated this week that it was “clear” former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election as GOP leaders in Wisconsin, a state he represented in Congress for 20 years, continued to pursue an investigation and audit of the results.
“It was not rigged. It was not stolen. Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won the election. It’s really clear,” Ryan told Wisconsin’s ABC affiliate WISN 12 in an interview that was published on Tuesday.
Nearly 10 months after the presidential race, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is still overseeing an audit and investigation of the 2020 election led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has traveled both to the site of a GOP-backed election review in Arizona and to the election conspiracist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s cybersymposium.
The election investigation could cost Wisconsin taxpayers $680,000.
“He exhausted his cases. He exhausted the court challenges. None of them went his way, so he legitimately lost,” Ryan further told WISN 12 of Trump’s election loss. “Is there mischief, organized shenanigans in elections? Sure. Is there fraud? Yes. Was it organized to the extent that it would have swung the Electoral College and the presidential election? Absolutely not.”
Ryan, for his part, sees folly in state and local GOP officials continuing to cater to Trump’s whims and baseless election claims.
“I think it’s a big mistake for the Republican Party to be a party about a person or personality,” Ryan told WISN 12. “And I think we’ll just keep losing if we wrap ourselves around one person. We have not lost this much this fast in a long, long time.”