Boehner: Trump ‘stepped all over their loyalty’ by lying to followers

Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said former President Trump “stepped all over their loyalty” when he peddled claims of voter fraud to his followers in the months following the 2020 election.

In an interview days before the release of his book “On the House: A Washington Memoir,” Boehner told USA Today that he decided to speak out after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to hold Trump accountable for his part in the insurrection.

“I don’t think it was just about him showing up at a rally on Jan. 6th,” Boehner told USA Today. “The comments that were made all summer about the election was going to be stolen from him, all the follow-up noise that occurred after the election – I kept looking for the facts.”

“What struck me, especially after the election, was, here’s all these people loyal to Donald Trump, and he abused them,” Boehner added. “He stepped all over their loyalty to him by continuing to say things that just weren’t true.”

Days after the insurrection, Boehner tweeted a condemnation of the attack and denounced the Republican Party, and he sent an emotional email to an informal group of friends, allies and former aides he refers to as “Boehnerland.”

In December, then-Attorney General William Barr said that the Department of Justice had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election. Dozens of courts have also shot down lawsuits alleging the election wasn’t legitimate.

In his book, Boehner also recalled the first time he met Trump: over a game of golf during a fundraising tour with two insurance executives at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester, New York, USA Today reported.

Boehner, who at the time was the House minority leader, said he was informed “out of nowhere” that Trump would be the group’s fourth.

“He was very friendly, but in an in-your-face, this-is-how-they-talk-in-New-York kind of way that I was not used to at all,” Boehner recalled, according to USA Today.

“Direct, loud, intense,” he added.

Around The Web