Paul Ryan calls fellow Republicans ‘anti-democratic’ and ‘anti-conservative’ over efforts to reject Biden’s win

The former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan put out a ruthless statement in response to members of his own party attempting to overturn the election results.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans," the 2012 vice presidential nominee said.

Mr Ryan said that the effort would do "significant damage to American democracy," even if it was doomed to fail.

He urged members to "consider the precedent that it would set," and that "voters determine the president, and this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people".

"Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate," Mr Ryan finished.

Democratic California Congressman and one of Mr Biden's challengers in the 2020 primaries, Eric Swalwell blamed Mr Ryan for being part of the problem.

Mr Ryan represented Wisconsin's first district in Congress for 20 years, from 1999 to 2019, and was the Speaker from 2015 until he left.

12 Republican senators and at least 140 House Republicans have declared that they will reject the results of the election when Congress votes to certify the results.

This will force a debate and another vote in both houses of Congress but is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome of the election.

Democrats control the house and a majority of Republicans in the senate look likely to vote to certify the election results.

Mr Ryan said that the "Trump campaign had ample opportunity to challenge election results, and those efforts failed from lack of evidence".

The Trump campaign and its allies have lost over 50 lawsuits challenging the results of the election in court.

Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, and Mitt Romney have also spoken out against the effort, signing on to a statement that said that the efforts to overturn the election “are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans’ confidence in the already determined election results". 

The Republican governor of Maryland Larry Hogan said that “the scheme by members of Congress to reject the certification of the presidential election makes a mockery of our system and who we are as Americans".

Mr Hogan added that the Republicans behind the efforts to reject the results seemed to have "forgotten the basic principle that they are beholden to the people, not the other way around".