Tom Emmer cast doubt on the 2020 election and supported lawsuit to throw election to Trump

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Tom Emmer, a leading Republican candidate to be speaker of the House, baselessly said there were "questionable" practices in the 2020 presidential election.

Later, Emmer signed an amicus brief in support of a last-ditch Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out the results in key swing states.

Though he would vote to certify the results on January 6, 2021, the comments and actions show Emmer flirted with some of the same election denial rhetoric as far-right members of the Republican caucus.

Speaking with the radio show for the far-right publication Breitbart News 12 days after the election, Emmer baselessly suggested that mail-in ballots might have "skewed" the election against Trump.

"I think that you will see the courts, if nothing else, this president is making sure that he stays focused and his team stays focused on these questionable election practices," Emmer said. "We're gonna find out - if it's accurate - how much they skewed the outcome of the election in Georgia and elsewhere."

"I had one of my colleagues telling me in Georgia that where we got voter ID we're doing great, where we can't reasonably identify the voter, we're getting killed," he added, saying he hoped the state would restrict vote by mail in the then-upcoming January Georgia Senate runoff elections.

Emmer was quieter than many Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020 election. But in interviews and public comments, reviewed by CNN's KFile ahead of the speakership vote, Emmer refused to say Biden won the election and bashed the press for calling the race.