So many days in this country feel like Feb. 2.
We’re all like Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day,” stuck in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. We wake up at 6 a.m., “I Got You Babe” is on the radio. “Don’t forget your booties, because it’s cold out there today,” the announcer says.
Monday was one of those days. “Democrats say GOP lawmakers implicated in Jan. 6 should be expelled,” the headline at The Hill read.
That’s funny, I thought to myself, that happened months ago. Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush drew up a resolution within hours of the Capitol incursion calling for the expulsion from Congress of those who “incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election” — i.e., didn’t vote to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island tweeted on Jan 11., “The Senate Ethics Committee … must consider the expulsion, or censure and punishment, of Sens. [Ted] Cruz, [Josh] Hawley, and perhaps others” for similar reasons.
I believe the Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences. They have broken their sacred Oath of Office.
I will be introducing a resolution calling for their expulsion. pic.twitter.com/JMTlQ4IfnR
— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) January 6, 2021
The Senate will need to conduct security review of what happened and what went wrong, likely through Rules, Homeland and Judiciary. The Senate Ethics Committee also must consider the expulsion, or censure and punishment, of Sens. Cruz, Hawley, and perhaps others.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) January 11, 2021
But wait, I was promised: This was new!
Two men involved in the Jan. 6 rally in support of then-President Donald Trump — one described as an organizer, the other as a planner — spoke to Rolling Stone for a piece published Sunday.
According to that publication’s Hunter Walker, they “detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”
The publication also “separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses.”
Spoiler alert: This all isn’t as explosive as you might think.
Nowhere in the article are any of the Republican representatives tied to planning the riot at the Capitol. Instead, the sources said, they were in on planning briefings regarding the protests and rallies that happened in Washington on Jan. 6 with Republicans lawmakers who planned to vote against certifying the election.
The two sources said there were “dozens” of briefings involving a number of pro-Trump Republicans who either participated or sent staffers: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
At only one point in the piece was something genuinely untoward alleged, at least on the part of representatives themselves: The sources told Rolling Stone that Gosar “dangled the possibility of a ‘blanket pardon’ in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.”
One of the sources, described as an “organizer,” said the two received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from him and that their “impression was that it was a done deal … that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval.”
They quoted Gosar as saying, “I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing.”
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