After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tried to overturn the state-certified congressional election of Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) following Democrat Rita Hart’s six-vote loss, the American taxpayers were left paying over $800,000 worth of legal fees, according to a report.

The Democrat-led Committee on House Administration voted along party lines to use the power of the government to challenge the results of Iowa’s Second Congressional District election after refusing to accept the 2020 state-certified results, which showed Miller-Meeks won by six votes.

Democrats on the committee took advantage of a provision in the rules package from this year that says “funds shall be available for expenses incurred between January 3, 2021, and January 3, 2022” to resolve any contested election “in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Committee on House Administration.”

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The Democrats on the committee paid high-priced law firm Jenner & Block a total of $699,294 to lead their attempt to overturn the election results, which had already been officially certified by Iowa’s secretary of state after a recount. Republicans on the committee retained law firm Jones Day to respond to the challenge, paying it a substantially smaller sum of $126,942, according to committee records.

Multiple Democrats defected from the partisan effort by Pelosi and the committee to overturn Iowa’s Second Congressional District election and seat Hart instead of Miller-Meeks. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) said in a CNN interview at the time, “The burden of proof in this matter lies with Ms. Hart, and her evidence would need to clear a very high bar to warrant action from the House. … Otherwise, election decisions made at the state and local level should be respected.”

The report added that the committee paid Jenner & Block $670,241 by the time Hart withdrew her  challenge on March 31. The firm was paid an additional $29,053 the first week of April. While the firm was paid nearly $700,000 in total, Open Secrets showed that the firm had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates in the latest cycle, over 86 percent of which went to Democrats.

“At the end of the day, more than a million in taxpayer dollars will have been wasted on Speaker Pelosi’s efforts to steal an election in order to grow her majority,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), the top Republican on the committee, said to the Free Beacon. “Iowa’s process was bipartisan, transparent, timely, and the outcome was never in doubt. This contest should have never been filed and Democrats on this committee should have dismissed it before a penny of tax dollars went to any law firm.”

“While Democrats were trying to take the voices of Iowans away, they were using our tax dollars to do it,” the Republican Party of Iowa’s Communications Director Kollin Crompton told Breitbart News. “It’s shameful and the money should be returned to the American people.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the Democrat chair of the committee in charge of retaining the legal representation, did not provide a comment to the Free Beacon. 

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.