Rutherford initially refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump was defeated by challenger Joe Biden. Rutherford echoed Trump's false claims of election fraud and suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in swing states won by Biden could hold a "decertification vote" that would lead to the U.S. House voting to select the next president, although he acknowledged that this attempt was unlikely to prevail. On January 7, 2021, after the Capitol was attacked by a pro-Trump mob in an attempted insurrection, Rutherford was one of 13 House Republicans would voted not to count the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, despite a number of audits and recounts confirming the election outcome in those states.