If Washington Republicans thought their efforts to obscure their complicity in the attempted insurrection incited by President Donald Trump this week would give them a reprieve… they were wrong. As House Republicans hemorrhage support from voters and their donors, area ed boards continue to hold their feet to the fire, calling on them to be investigated or resign over their role in inciting and aiding the QAnon mob that murdered a police offer, then caving to President Trump. Read more below:
The Denver Post: Editorial: Lauren Boebert’s role in the insurrection must also be investigated
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s words and actions before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were dangerous.
We can say with certainty that her words on Twitter, in interviews and on the floor of the U.S. House supported the lie that the U.S. election was fraudulent and that Democrats were stealing the election from President Donald Trump. Without those lies, we believe there would not have been an insurrection, and U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick would still be alive.
One week after the attack, 232 members of Congress, including 10 Republicans and four Colorado Democrats, voted to impeach Trump on a single count of “inciting an insurrection.” Did Boebert play a role in inciting the insurrection? The case isn’t nearly as clear cut as the one against the president. Just as the Senate will investigate to determine whether Trump should never again be able to run for president, so too must the House investigate whether Boebert should be expelled or censured for her role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
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Reps. Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn and Lauren Boebert opposed. But Buck made an important distinction in his opposition to impeachment, condemning the process and saying it will only further enrage those who support Trump, but also saying he disagrees with Trump’s rhetoric during his Jan. 6 speech. Boebert and Lamborn defended the president’s speech as appropriate given that once in a speech of about 11,000 words he said the march would be peaceful and patriotic.
The question is whether Boebert violated the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone from holding federal office who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Her words in public fall short of calling for insurrection, although her live tweets about the secure location of House members during the attack — “We were locked in the House Chambers” she wrote followed shortly by “The Speaker has been removed from the chambers” — do raise questions.
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Boebert has issued statements saying she denounced the violence of Jan. 6, but she refuses to back off her charge that the U.S. election was stolen. Boebert’s rhetoric leading up to the attack advocated extreme measures to stop what she described as “winning an election through fraud” and “overthrowing the election.”
“Listening to @realDonaldTrump and @MariaBartiromo right now. There is no way that anyone can call the 2020 presidential election fair. We have to make it right.” Boebert tweeted on Nov. 29.
On Jan. 2 she wrote: “Great words with President Trump tonight. Get ready, y’all!”
Two days before the insurrection she wrote: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.”
On the day of the insurrection, she wrote: “Today is 1776.”
In 1776, many of this nation’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. That preliminary founding of the nation is what Boebert later clarified she was referring to, however, the Revolutionary War was already raging in 1776, and we could see how those who believed Boebert that the election was being stolen could have also believed she was referring to a revolution, not a declaration.
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Boebert is using her office to damage the U.S. We can’t imagine that’s what her constituents had in mind when they elected her just a few months ago. Coloradans — especially her constituents — need definitive answers about whether she was a hapless victim of Trump’s actions or whether she was a participant in an effort to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
NJ.com: Editorial: Trump has to go. And he should take Van Drew with him
As Congress moves to impeach Donald Trump, the real question is how anyone in either party can stand in opposition.
The blood is on the president’s hands, his guilt established beyond doubt by his own words. In his infamous call to battle just before the mob launched its attack, Trump urged his supporters to “fight much harder” against “bad people” and to “show strength” as they marched on the Capitol.
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For those who will oppose impeachment — such as the famously feckless Jeff Van Drew — the question is this: If inciting violence to overthrow a democratic election is not an impeachable offense, then what is?
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Van Drew deserves special scorn for peddling his phony outrage over election integrity the last few months, and if he had any decency, he would resign now and do charity work for the rest of his life.
Newsday: Editorial: Zeldin’s Failure as a Leader
Deluded rioters sweeping toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 carried “Stop the Steal” banners and claimed a corrupt election, refusing to accept President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
Belief in this alternate reality had many fathers and factors, but it was stoked by the outrageous undermining of election integrity by President Donald Trump and prominent Republicans, including Lee Zeldin, one of Long Island’s five members of the House of Representatives.
At a moment in history when many Americans refuse to even agree on the facts, it is crucial that our elected officials actually lead and speak hard truths and avoid inflaming conspiracies.
In that, Zeldin failed.
The outspoken, media-savvy Republican who previously served four years in the State Senate was the only member of Long Island’s congressional delegation to object to the certification of Electoral College votes. In a swing district that represents the Twin Forks and most of the Town of Brookhaven, he outperformed Trump in 2020. He has tried to deflect from his election rhetoric by serving up whataboutism, saying Democrats have objected to the count in past presidential elections. But in those cases their numbers were few and the losing presidential candidates had long since conceded. That was not the case in this election, when an incumbent president was trying aggressively to overturn the outcome.
But that shameful vote, hours after the lives of his colleagues were endangered by a riot in the Capitol, was only the culmination of a period of duplicity. Between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6, Zeldin repeatedly elevated misleading statements and inflammatory election material to a hungry national audience.
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Instead it is Zeldin who should be haunted by the lies and rhetoric that led to the insurrection in which members of law enforcement working to protect Zeldin’s colleagues were beaten and one killed.
After the riot, Zeldin put out a statement praying for a peaceful transition and saying Biden “will be sworn in as the next President of the United States.” It was too little, too late.
The nation is still at a crossroads. Too many still wrongly believe that the 2020 election was rigged. That’s dangerous. Zeldin can still use his sizable platform — bolstered in part through allegiance to Trump — to unambiguously tell those people that the election was not stolen. He must explain that any small irregularities had no chance of changing the outcome. It’s time to disavow the conspiracy theories.
His actions are doubly disappointing for Long Island, because his extreme positions will marginalize him and that will only hurt his constituents. Zeldin is rightly proud of his military service and his continued role as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve but he failed to meet this historic moment and truly lead.
The Eastern New Mexico News: Opinion: Herrell helped enable insurrection
Herrell is acting just like Donald Trump, denying reality because it doesn’t give her the power she craves.
Damn right that’s anti-democratic, and Herrell, Trump and a bunch of other sore losers tried to apply it to our national vote last week. The result of their misbehavior was an assault on our U.S. Capitol.
What’s more, the fact that Herrell registered her “objections” after an attempted coup, just as the rioters wanted her to do, makes her complicit. She enabled the riot with her rhetoric.
York Dispatch: Editorial: Losing PAC money just deserts for Perry, Smucker
Reps. Scott Perry and Lloyd Smucker could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations over last week’s debacle on electoral votes.
It couldn’t happen to two more deserving guys.
Perry, R-Carroll Township, and Smucker, R-Lancaster, will feel the fallback from their choice to back President Donald Trump’s delusions that he won November’s election by voting to contest Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes.
President-elect Joe Biden won the state, by the way. Just ask any of the many judges who tossed out lawsuits brought in by Trump’s campaign and others. Biden won the free and fair elections.
Perry and Smucker didn’t let that fact get in the way on Jan. 6, after they both spent hours in a secure location hiding from the mob that Trump sent to ravage the Capitol building. Perry stood on the floor of the House chamber, where police and Secret Service members with guns drawn had held back rioters only hours before, and put forth the motion that Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes be disqualified.
Had his motion gone through, he would have disenfranchised all of the voters in the state, including his own constituents and even himself. The fact that 146 other Republican members of Congress, including Smucker and six the seven other Republican representatives from Pennsylvania, voted to allow this travesty shows just how far down the Trump rabbit hole the GOP has gone.
For the record, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., voted against the motion to object to the Pennsylvania votes, as did Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and all Democrats representing the state.
With the electoral votes counted and the rioters cleared from the Capitol, the 147 might have thought they were on safe ground. They wouldn’t incur the wrath of Trump, and with two years to go before the next election, they had plenty of time to make their constituents forget about this one act.
Not so fast.
By Monday, companies were looking at the names of the politicians they donate to and making some changes. By Tuesday, there was a long list of corporate-funded PACs that had announced they were suspending contributions to the 147 Republicans, some for six months or more and others permanently.
It was a hard hit to the war chest for the two congressmen representing parts of York County.
Perry’s campaign has received nearly $130,000 from PACs that have now cut him off during his five congressional campaigns, according to OpenSecrets,org, which catalogs campaign contributions reported through the Federal Election Commission. Those include the PACs associated with AT&T and Comcast, which contributed a combined $20,000 to his 2020 campaign.
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No one from either congressman’s office returned calls from reporter Logan Hullinger seeking comment. Not a shock.
Corporate PACs have had an outsized effect on political campaigns since the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court in 2010. But what is given can be taken away, as Perry and Smucker are finding out.
Maybe it’s time to pay more attention to your constituents, gentlemen. You know, the ones whose votes you wanted to throw out. Let’s see how that works out for you.
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