The investment bank JPMorgan Chase — which, through its political action committee (PAC), donated a total of almost $1 million to individual candidates for federal office and committees backing certain candidates across the 2020 election cycle — has decided that it will be suspending its financial support of all Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn last year’s election results, according to Reuters. That includes 147 Republicans, most of whom are members of the House, who opposed the certification of Biden’s win when Congress met to certify the election outcome in January.
There is not and has never been any legitimate evidence that Biden’s win was somehow the result of fraud. Claims and insinuations to the contrary from Republican leaders — including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was among those voting against the certification of Biden’s win — amount to little besides conspiracy theories and political grandstanding. JPMorgan has decided on holding off on donating to the 147 Republicans in question through at least the 2021-2022 election cycle, including the midterms, after which they will examine whether to resume giving on a case-by-case basis.
Congress finished certifying Biden’s victory after hours of delays brought on by the storming of the Capitol by openly murderous Trump supporters, and even after this clear demonstration of the potential real world consequences of encouraging what amounts to the overthrow of the U.S. political system, many Republicans opted to vote in favor of throwing out Biden’s win. As JPMorgan put it, “This was a unique and historic moment when we believe the country needed our elected officials to put aside strongly held differences and demonstrate unity.” Many Congressional Republicans didn’t deliver.
Led by Trump’s continued false insistence that last year’s election was somehow rigged for Biden, Republicans have continued to consume themselves with metaphorical hand-wringing over the presidential race, granting wide open space to the demonstrably false idea that there’s reason to be concerned about the integrity of the electoral system in the United States. Now, Trump is apparently of the belief that he’ll be reinstated as president by August — meaning a former president is harboring a fantasy about the overthrow of the current U.S. government.