Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s  history of defending January 6 insurrectionists 

On Feb. 28, 2021, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Fox News that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square. But before and since that day, Scott has implicitly and explicitly pushed the conspiracy theories that spurred violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On the day of the insurrection, Scott was one of seven senators to vote against certifying Biden’s 2020 victory in the state of Pennsylvania. In the hours preceding that vote, Scott released a statement falsely asserting that Pennsylvania violated state law by counting certain mail-in ballots.

“The Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, along with state courts, made a decision to allow votes to be counted that came in after election day, even if they did not have a postmark, in defiance of state law. This is absurd, and cannot be tolerated,” the statement said.

When Scott made this claim, the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that no such laws were violated. Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

A month later, when the House of Representatives moved to impeach former President Donald Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection, Scott dismissed the effort as “political theater.”  The following May, Scott opposed the creation of a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot. 

In Dec. 2022, when the House Jan. 6 Special Committee recommended four criminal charges against Trump, Scott questioned the validity of its findings. “I think we ought to leave it to the Department of Justice to deal with these issues,” Scott told Bloomberg Radio.

But less than a year later, when the Justice Department actually filed criminal charges against Trump for his role in the insurrection, Scott still wasn’t satisfied.

“Joe Biden’s DOJ will do anything they can to silence Biden’s political opponents,” Scott said on the social media platform X, “this is what communist dictators do.”

Scott is currently running for a second term in the U.S. Senate in the election being held on Nov. 5, 2024. Spokespeople for Scott did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.