Senate Democrats have officially requested an ethics investigation be launched into the role Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz played in inciting the recent attack on the Capitol building that left five people dead and dozens of police officers injured.
“By proceeding with their objections to the electors after the violent attack, Senators Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mob’s cause and made future violence more likely,” seven senators wrote in a letter to the Senate Ethics panel chair and vice-chair.
The riot in the Capitol occurred the day Congress convened to count and confirm the electoral votes from the November presidential election. Missouri’s private shame-turned-national disgrace Josh Hawley decided to lead the effort to object to those votes, based on exactly nothing, and Cruz and other senators followed suit.
If there had been literally any valid justification for objection to that count, Hawley’s move would have been petty and pointless, but perhaps not grounds for an investigation. But he had no reasonable basis aside from Donald Trump’s constant tweets about a “stolen” election. Every lawsuit brought by Trump and his legal team had already been dismissed and every state-level authority in the contested states had certified their results. There was no reason for Hawley and Cruz to push for an objection, and in doing so anyway, they absolutely actively bolstered the mob’s sense of angry entitlement.
The ethics committee does not have the power to bring criminal charges against Hawley and Cruz, but they can recommend their expulsion, which would require a 2/3 vote of their colleagues. They can also refer their recommendations to federal agencies, including the Department of Justice (which would include the FBI).
Of course, the other person that fanned those flames is Donald Trump, who directly told that same mob in the hours (and days and weeks and months) before their riot that the Democrats had stolen an election and the only course of action was to “fight.”
I hope Trump enjoys his post-presidential impeachment trial as much as Hawley and Cruz enjoy their ethics investigations. Which is to say, not at all.
(via Politico, image: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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