Should Those Who Took Part In Trump's Coup Be Barred From Public Office?

McCarthy, who just appointed George Santos to two committees, says he will block Adam Schiff, former chair of the Intel Committee, from being reappointed to the committee, claiming that Schiff “lied to the American public” during one of Trump’s impeachments. This morning a jury convicted 4 far right Oath Keepers— Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo— of seditious conspiracy. A few hours earlier, it took a jury 2 hours to find another of Trump’s J-6 insurrectionists, Richard “Bigo” Barnett, guilty of all charges. But while the House Republicans are desperate to scrub Trump’s— and their own— reputation, Democratic lawmakers on a state level are working to bar those who participated in the coup attempt from holding public office. The Associated Press' Maysoon Khan wrote that “New York, Connecticut and Virginia are among states where proposed legislation would prohibit anyone convicted of participating in an insurrection from holding public office or a position of public trust, such as becoming a police officer.” Republicans are fighting their efforts; I can’t imagine why.

While the bills vary in scope, their aim is similar.

“If you’ve tried to take down our government through violent means, in no way should you be part of it,” New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said.

He is sponsoring a bill that would bar people convicted of engaging in an insurrection or rebellion against the U.S. from holding civil office, meaning that they would not be able to serve as a judge or member of the Legislature. Hoylman-Sigal said he introduced the bill this year because he saw more people who were involved in the riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, running for office last year.

He described the assault on the Capitol as “a real attack on the foundations of our free and fair democracy and the values which enable that to persist.”

A Virginia lawmaker introduced a bill this month, on the second anniversary of the Capitol riot, that would prohibit anyone convicted of a felony related to an attempted insurrection or riot from serving in positions of public trust, including those involving policymaking, law enforcement, safety, education or health.

A Connecticut bill would prohibit people convicted of sedition, rebellion, insurrection or a felony related to one of those acts from running for or holding public office. State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, who introduced the measure, told the Associated Press that he wants the legislation eventually to bar them from holding state or municipal jobs.

The legislation in the states comes after the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee’s final report, which found that former President Trump criminally engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to take action to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

The committee’s recently concluded work may have provided another springboard for lawmakers to act and propose ways to hold people accountable, said Victoria Bassetti, a senior policy advisor at States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for fair elections.

Some Republicans say the legislation is unnecessary.

In New York, Republican Assemblyman Will Barclay, the minority leader, called the bill there a “political statement,” saying it is “more political than it is a concern about public policy.”

He said that existing rules already apply to people in certain positions who are convicted of crimes and that those laws “should be sufficient.”

The legislation is another example of how the Capitol riot has become a political Rorschach test in the country.

Many Republicans refuse to see the attempt to violently halt the presidential certification— which was based on lies that the 2020 election was stolen— as an insurrection, while a strong majority of the party continues to believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected. Even students are being taught different versions of the attack, depending on whether they live in more conservative or liberal parts of the nation.

The opposing realities came into sharp focus this month in Pennsylvania during a fraught exchange between two lawmakers.

In a committee hearing, Republican state Sen. Cris Dush slammed his gavel as he ruled Democratic state Sen. Amanda Cappelletti out of order after she described the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “the site of an insurrection.”

“Insurrection, nobody has been charged with that,” Dush said. “There’s not been a single charge against any of those people as insurrectionists. In this committee, we are not using that term.”

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in the Capitol riot with federal crimes, with about half of them pleading guilty to riot-related charges and more than three dozen convicted at trial. The charges include misdemeanors for those accused of entering the Capitol illegally but not participating in violence as well as felony seditious conspiracy for far-right extremist group members accused of plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power.

In November, two leaders of the Oath Keepers extremist group were convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors alleged was a weeks-long plot to use force to keep Trump in office. Leaders of the Proud Boys and additional members of the Oath Keepers are currently standing trial on the sedition charge, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years behind bars.

Weeks after the testy committee exchange in Pennsylvania, Cappelletti told the Associated Press that it was important to make sure people understand that the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection.

“These are factually correct things,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree politically about policy or other things, but we can acknowledge that that happened and start to figure out how we move forward to work together to build up that public trust again.”

Dush remained steadfast in his view that what unfolded on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection.

“If there had been some sort of plot for an insurrection, that would’ve come apart quite quickly after the government got the control back,” he said in a phone interview.

There have been some earlier attempts to prevent certain officials from either running for or holding office.

A New Hampshire bill that would have barred anyone who participates in an insurrection or rebellion from holding office in the state died last year.

Also last year, groups brought lawsuits under a rarely cited section of the 14th Amendment dealing with insurrection. They sought to disqualify a handful of U.S. House members from seeking reelection for events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot.

In New Mexico, a state court in September disqualified a rural county commissioner from holding public office for engaging in the Capitol insurrection. Couy Griffin had been previously convicted in federal court of a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol grounds, without going inside the building. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.

The judge permanently barred Griffin, who was then an elected commissioner from Otero County, from federal and local public office.

In West Virginia, a former state lawmaker who pleaded guilty to a felony— civil disorder— for participating in the riot and who served time announced earlier this month that he was running for Congress.

“We have to really rid ourselves of those who would take down our government,” said Duff, the Connecticut lawmaker. “There’s no place for any of them to be [in] any kind of elected or appointed officer.”

I asked some of the candidates Blue America is backing in the Virginia legislative elections this year. Presumably these people will all have to vote on this. None of them are running on it as a specific issue but they all feel strongly about it. Kannan Srinivasan is running for the House of Delegates, where this will be a hot issue after the election. “Democracy audits institutions,” he told me, “are pillars of our society. Anyone disrupting those pillars with violence, is directly attacking the foundation of our polity. It is appropriate to prohibit such persons from positions involving public trust.” Terrence Walker is also running for a Delegate seat. And he told he he’s “all for the measure; anyone who believes in violent overthrow of our government rather than peaceful elections, shouldn't be serving in elected office; ‘protect the constitution from all enemies— foreign & domestic’ ought to mean what it says.”

But where this debate is raging now is in the state Senate. One of our candidates for that body is Victoria Luevanos. She told me she’s “trying to be surprised that we have lawmakers that can't come to an agreement in regards to if domestic terrorists should be able to infiltrate our public servant positions, get paid with tax payer dollars, and be in a position to redirect those tax payer dollars towards their extremist interest or not. I would assume all sides could agree that extremists have no place in leadership, but it seems to be a tough concept for the conservatives to grasp because they have become the advocacy group for criminal rights. If Governor Youngkin wants to follow after another Republican politician in another state, like Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, playing down the insurrection with political correctness calling it a riot and not what it is, then we just have to accept that Virginia's Governor isn't looking out for the best interest of American values. Republicans can either get on the side of holding people accountable for their actions, or they can continue to make it a safe place for those who want to take down our government from within.”