Michael Guest Election Denial Checks & Balances Mississippi

Michael Guest Voted to Throw Out Two States' Electoral Votes. A Month Later He Admitted Nobody Ever Showed Him Evidence.

Guest signed the Supreme Court brief to overturn four states' results, voted to reject Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electors, then told a Jackson TV station in February 2021 that no evidence of substantial fraud was ever presented. He was a district attorney for ten years.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 11, 2026

Michael Guest Voted to Throw Out Two States' Electoral Votes. A Month Later He Admitted Nobody Ever Showed Him Evidence.

Before he came to Congress, Michael Guest spent, by his own campaign's account, "11 years as District Attorney for Madison and Rankin Counties." That's a career built on one skill: deciding whether the evidence in front of you is enough to take away someone's rights.

In December 2020 and January 2021, he made a different call.

What he actually did

December 11, 2020. Guest was one of 126 House Republicans who signed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Texas's lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the presidential results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Court refused to hear it.

January 6, 2021. After a mob stormed the Capitol and the House came back into session that night, the chamber voted on whether to reject Arizona's electoral votes. Guest voted yes. The objection failed.

January 7, 2021. The same vote on Pennsylvania. Guest voted yes again. That objection failed too.

January 13, 2021. The House impeached Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection. Guest voted no.

Then he sat down with a Jackson TV station

On February 4, 2021, Guest gave an interview to WLBT in Jackson. Asked about his votes, he said this:

"I thought that there were voter irregularities, that there was probably voter fraud... But we were never presented evidence to show that the voter irregularity, the voter fraud was substantial enough that the elections should be overturned."

That is a career prosecutor saying, on the record, that nobody ever met the burden of proof.

He voted to overturn them anyway. He explained that his votes weren't really about fraud at all:

"I did not vote to challenge those states based on election fraud or election irregularity. I believe that the will of the legislature was violated by the court system and, in Pennsylvania, by the Secretary of State."

So the theory is: state courts and a state's chief election officer interpreted their own state's election rules in a way Guest disagreed with, and that was reason enough for a congressman from Mississippi to vote to discard the ballots of millions of people in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Notice what that argument does. It doesn't need evidence — that's the point of it. Fraud claims can be checked and thrown out in court, and they were, over and over. "The will of the legislature was violated" can't be checked. It's a position, not a finding. It lets you cast the same vote the fraud crowd cast while telling your hometown station you're the reasonable one.

The word he used about the man who sent them

In the same interview, asked about impeachment, Guest said he agreed with Kevin McCarthy's assessment and added:

"I think there's a lot of blame to go around. I think the President could have chosen his words better there at the rally..."

Could have chosen his words better. That's how he described the speech that preceded a mob breaking into the building where he works. Guest was in the House chamber when Capitol Police locked it down. He was escorted to the Rayburn building and sheltered there for hours.

He voted for the investigation. Then he voted against it.

Here's the part that's genuinely his own, and it doesn't fit the usual script.

On May 19, 2021, the House voted on H.R. 3233, to create an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack. It came out of bipartisan negotiations between Mississippi's own Bennie Thompson, then chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and that committee's top Republican, John Katko of New York. House Republican leadership recommended a no vote. Guest voted yes anyway — one of only 35 Republicans who did.

He gave Mississippi Today a statement explaining why:

"We need answers to questions surrounding the events of Jan. 6."

The bill passed the House 252–175 and died in the Senate.

Six weeks later, on June 30, 2021, the House voted on H. Res. 503 to create a select committee to do the same job — the only route left after the bipartisan commission was blocked. Guest voted no.

You can construct an argument for that. The select committee was structured differently and Republicans complained about it. But strip the procedure away and look at the outcome: the man who said "we need answers" voted for the investigation that couldn't happen, and against the one that could.

Why this still matters in 2026

Guest now chairs the House Ethics Committee — the panel that judges whether other members of Congress meet the standards of the institution. He also broke the STOCK Act himself and paid a $200 fee for it.

And he has never walked any of it back. The watchdog group Accountability.GOP grades every member of Congress on their record toward democratic institutions. It gives Guest an F.

The record is short and it is not in dispute, because most of it is his own voice:

He signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to void four states' results.
He voted twice to reject other states' electors.
He said a month later that nobody ever showed him evidence that would justify overturning an election.
He voted against impeaching the man he said "could have chosen his words better."
He voted for a January 6 commission that couldn't pass, and against the committee that could.

He ran a district attorney's office for eleven years. He knows exactly what it means to act without evidence.