Democrats Are Shirking Their Duty By Not Holding Insurrectionists Accountable

A Kansas state Rep. Gene Suellentrop (R) was sentenced to two days in jail for a wild wrong-way drunken ride down Interstate 70 in Topeka. (Remember him? He called the arresting officer "donut boy.") And Utah state Rep. Travis Seegmiller (R) was charged with three misdemeanors after shooting a deer in a residential neighborhood (all class B misdemeanors, each punishable by up to 6 months in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000). Seegmiller said he was out of work and needed the meat to feed his family. Each would have been better off if they committed treason since nothing seems to be happening to the Republican office-holders who either planned or participated in the violent Trump coup attempt on 1/6.

This morning, Jamelle Bouie's NY Times column, Cori Bush and AOC Are Right About Jan. 6 and 1866, is a harsh indictment of Biden's thumbs-twiddling Justice Department and his nothingburger Attorney General. A new report in Rolling Stone, makes it clear that Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (Q-CO), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Madison Cawthorn (Nazi-NC) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) were in on the planning and/or execution of the coup attempt. Gosar, for example, reportedly told potential rally goers that Trump would give them a “blanket pardon” for their activities. That's what the 14th Amendment is for.

All the congressional insurrectionists are denying culpability. Gosar in threatening to sue, though no one thinks he will, since it could only end with him in prison. But, wrote Bouie, the Republican organizers who Rolling Stone quoted "plan to testify before the Jan. 6 select committee to provide more details about what they say was collaboration between Republican lawmakers and the pro-Trump activists who planned the events that ultimately led to the attack on the Capitol.

In the meantime, some Democrats are already calling for their removal from office.

“Any member of Congress who helped plot a terrorist attack on our nation’s capitol must be expelled,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “Those responsible remain a danger to our democracy, our country, and human life in the vicinity of our Capitol and beyond.”

Likewise, Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said on Twitter that the House must “investigate and expel members of Congress who helped incite the deadly insurrection on our Capitol.”

Bush had actually introduced a House resolution for this purpose just days after the attack. “There is no place in the people’s House for these heinous actions,” she said at the time, referring to “members who attempted to disenfranchise voters and incited this violence.”

“I firmly believe,” she went on, “that these members are in breach of their sworn Oath of Office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. They must be held accountable.”

They weren’t. There was simply no appetite, among House leadership, for such drastic and decisive action. There still isn’t. But it was a serious demand, and we should take it seriously.

Bush’s resolution rests on section three of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which cleared Congress in 1866 and was ratified in 1868:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

In plain English, Congress has the power and authority to expel from office any constitutional officer who engages in sedition and takes up arms against the Constitution of the United States.

...If the ultimate goal of section three, in other words, was to preserve the integrity of Congress against those who would capture its power and plot against the constitutional order itself, then Representative Bush is right to cite the clause against any members of Congress who turn out to have collaborated with the plotters to overturn the election and whose allies are still fighting to “stop the steal.”

There is a movement afoot to undermine electoral democracy for the sake of a would-be strongman. We have the tools to stop it. Congress, and by this I mean the Democratic majority, should use them.

Democratic congressional inaction encourages Republican insurrectionists to think they are above the law. A failure to prosecute them will be another failure of a weak, feckless, utterly worthless Biden administration-- with acquiescence of weak, feckless, utterly worthless Democratic congressional majorities. After the midterms and after 2024, the shoe is very likely to be on the other foot-- and Democratic officials will get from the GOP exactly what they deserve. I look forward to it-- and the end of this pile of crap party. And allowing the planet to be destroyed by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is just a bonus. It must be excruciating for any progressive to call herself or himself a Democrat.

Marjorie Traitor Greene, delusional and obsessed with the "Communist revolution that the Democrats funded and waged," told Bannon yesterday that "January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol" and media outlets "would do anything to cause someone like me to be killed... If you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants. So there’s a clear difference between January 6th and the Marxist-communist revolution that antifa, BLM, Democrat ground troops waged on the American people in 2020."

Thomas Sibick, a 35 year old insurrectionist from the Buffalo area and now being held in jail without bond until his trial, said his participation in the Trumpist coup attempt "unequivocally an aberration" and that he was "consumed by the mob mentality... January 6th was a disgrace to our nation that left a scar Trump is ultimately responsible for, but we are strong and will heal from it. While many praise Trump I loathe him. [Trump's] "words and actions are nefarious causing pain and harm to the world."

Traitor Greene should be in the cell next to his, sharing it with Lauren Boebert. "Sibick was indicted on 10 counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting; civil disorder; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; robbery; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; impeding ingress and egress in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings; and act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings."