About
Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) was first elected to Congress in 2010 and now represents Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is running for reelection in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement and is a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, among others. According to his congressional bio, Breitbart has called him “a fierce defender of conservatism on Capitol Hill” and just before Christmas in 2014, he made a popular GOP address promising President Obama a lump of coal.
In 2019, Kelly called the beginning of Trump’s first impeachment “another date that will live in infamy,” comparing it to Pearl Harbor. In 2017, he told attendees at a Republican Party event that former President Obama was trying to undermine President Trump by running a “shadow government.” In 2021, a House ethics review found “substantial reason to believe” that Kelly’s wife used information her husband obtained as a member of Congress to buy stock in a steel mill that she later sold for a profit. In 2020, his car dealerships received as much as $1 million in federal Payroll Protection Plan funds during the height of the pandemic.
After the 2020 presidential election, Kelly adhered to the GOP playbook by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the voting process. He objected to certifying President Biden’s Electoral College win and voted against both impeaching Trump for inciting the mob and establishing a special House committee to investigate the insurrection, among other measures.
January 6, 2021
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Kelly joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election. He joined other Republicans from Pennsylvania’s delegation in using the constitutional argument proposed by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) to justify their vote. “If there is an American ideal that all citizens, regardless of party affiliation, can agree upon, it is that we must have election integrity. Election integrity is the only way to ensure trust in our elections and it is accomplished by adhering to our Constitution and the law.”
- Kelly voted against impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the mob that disrupted congressional certification of the presidential election. ““I don’t believe President Trump committed an impeachable offense when he told those at the rally to protest peacefully and make their voices heard,” he wrote in a prepared statement. “He did not tell them to commit violence, and he and all of Congress have rightfully condemned the rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol.”
- He also voted against establishing a House committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.
The Big Lie
- After the election, Kelly sued to stop poll workers from “curing” ballots with minor errors or omissions, such as addresses.
- After Pennsylvania had been called for Biden, Kelly filed a lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s state law establishing universal mail-in voting, which would have reversed the outcome of the election. The same suit requested that if mail-in ballots were not discarded, then the state legislature (controlled by Republicans) should be allowed to select the state’s electors.
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Kelly signed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Post-2020 Election Subversion
- Kelly introduced H.R. 8753, the counterpart to Sen. Josh Hawley’s S. 4893, to ban ballot harvesting and mandate partisan poll watchers, among other measures.
- He also introduced the End Zuckerbucks Act, which would ban nonprofit organizations from donating to defray the government’s administrative costs of running elections.