Crowd 'groans' as governor hopeful unleashes rigged election rant: 'It's really sad'

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, who is now running to be his state's governor, has recently taken to embracing MAGA conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that are leaving some of his fellow state elections officials ill at ease.

NBC News reports that Warner recently went off on a conspiratorial rant at the National Association of Secretaries of State Winter Conference that "drew rare groans" from a crowd that is used to cordial, nonpartisan affairs.

"In October of 2020, the CIA lied to the American people on purpose and it was covered up by the FBI,” he declared. “We have our own federal agencies lying to the American people.”

The report goes on to note that Warner is "the only sitting election director in the country to openly embrace the election denialism that former President Donald Trump has used to explain his 2020 loss," although UCLA School of Law professor Rick Hasen, an expert in elections law, nonetheless tells NBC News that it's unnerving to see someone in such a position of power peddle such claims.

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"It is problematic when you have a chief election officer of a state embracing conspiracy theories that undermine people’s confidence in the election process for no good reason,” he said. "People should be able to look to their election and elected officials to provide them with truthful information and not to fan the flames of conspiracies."

Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, speculated to NBC that Warner really does know the truth about the 2020 election but is instead trying to appeal to hardcore MAGA voters in a bid to further his political ambitions.

“It’s really sad, I think, that he thinks he has to draw attention to himself that way," Fontes said. "I don’t even know that he really believes that, to be honest with you. He might just be pandering to a rabid base but it doesn’t help the rest of us."