Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Mon, December 20, 2021
The price of admission in a democracy is accepting that your side has lost. That’s especially true when you are an elected official. And that’s why elected leaders at every level – from county election boards and state legislatures to state officials, Congress, former President Donald Trump and all who enabled him – must be held accountable for threatening U.S. democracy and leaving it on a knife edge. They need to be expelled and forced out and prosecuted for putting America at risk.
These Trump acolytes fueled corrosive Stop the Steal lies about non-existent vote fraud and organized, supported and attended Stop the Steal rallies. Some plotted in legislatures, courts and Congress to nullify the 2020 presidential election by ignoring, contesting or simply throwing out legitimate votes. Some were on the Capitol grounds during the bloody Jan. 6 attack that left five people dead. At least one was part of the mob.
We don’t know all the details yet of who did what and when they did it, but we will.
March to the Capitol, 'fight like hell'
The House Jan. 6 committee knows it was Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan who forwarded a text to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 5, the day before Vice President Mike Pence presided over the ceremonial electoral vote count in Congress, saying that Pence should “call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”
The committee will know, if it doesn't already, who told Meadows that Trump’s allies “tried everything we could in our objection to the six states” on Jan. 6. “I am sorry nothing worked” – and which lawmakers helped plan the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally where Trump lied that he'd been robbed, told his followers to march to the Capitol, advised them to be peaceful and patriotic, then exhorted them to "fight like hell" because "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." And the committee will determine if anyone in Congress aided or abetted the mob that then stormed the Capitol.
President Donald Trump urges supporters to march to the Capitol at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) identified 21 Republican state legislators who took part in the events of Jan. 6 and several hundred who called to "stop the steal" or overthrow the 2020 election. One Virginia legislator was censured after expressing support for the Capitol mob and three others were booted off a committee apiece after urging Pence to block Joe Biden's victory in Virginia.
But according to the DLCC, the only legislator forced out so far was Delegate Derrick Evans of West Virginia, who was arrested after livestreaming himself breaking into the Capitol yelling "Move, move!" and "We're in!" He resigned before his colleagues could vote on expelling him. And at least three election-denying legislators who were on the Capitol grounds Jan. 6 are running for higher office or exploring a race.
Confederate loyalties sank 14 senators
For the U.S. House and Senate, congressional history suggests a path if Democrats have the evidence, the will and the stomach to act. Expulsion is the most severe penalty available, and its main trigger has been betraying the United States.
Fifteen senators have been expelled, one in 1797 for plotting to give U.S. territories to Great Britain and, more than 60 years later, 14 because of “support for Confederate rebellion.” The House has only expelled five members – two for corruption and three for “disloyalty to the Union; fighting for the Confederacy.”
Paul Hodgkins of Tampa is pictured on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Support for a rebellion and disloyalty to the nation were hallmarks of the Jan. 6 insurrection. As U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss put it in July when he sentenced defendant Paul Hodgkins, a Tampa, Florida crane operator who carried a Trump flag into the building: “He was staking a claim on the floor of the United States Senate, not with the American flag, but with a flag declaring his loyalty to a single individual over a nation.”
Hodgkins pleaded guilty to corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, a felony that carries a maximum 20-year sentence. The government has filed the same charge against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, and a Trump-appointed judge recently ruled it is an appropriate charge in those cases.
It is also a potential charge against elected officials, including Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, used the statutory language this month in describing a fundamental question in the panel's investigation: whether Trump, “through action or inaction, corruptly sought to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee investigating Jan. 6, at a meeting Dec. 13, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
That’s one of several avenues suggested by law professors Laurence Tribe, Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance in a Justice Department roadmap to investigating Trump and Jan. 6. Some of the potential charges are specific to Trump, the executive branch or his tight inner circle. But others could be used to charge anyone, from rioters to government officials at any level.
In addition to the statute Cheney cited, there is conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing or obstructing a government function like an election. That's looking increasingly plausible because “it sounds like members of Congress may have been part of this type of conspiracy,” McQuade told me. A third possibility is the federal voter fraud law that makes it a crime to deprive or defraud voters of a fair election. That could involve “anybody trying to get states to throw out elections,” said McQuade, a former prosecutor, including Trump telling the Georgia secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win.
Ousting voter choices is a big deal
Elected officials bear the most responsibility when democracy goes off the rails like this, but they also have the strongest shields against paying a price. They were elected fair and square, and it’s no small thing to countermand the voters’ will by throwing them out of office. You could even argue that by doing so, congressional and/or legal authorities would be reversing a legitimate election result, just like Trump was trying to do.
But, as Tribe, McQuade and Vance put it, “attempted coups cannot be ignored.” We are in a different world after the first non-peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history. “January 6th was without precedent,” Cheney said this month. “Our Constitution, the structure of our institutions and the rule of law, which are at the heart of what makes America great, are at stake.”
Republicans across the country are passing "election sabotage" laws that will help them tailor results to their liking if new restrictions on voting don’t get the job done. This absolutism about winning is dangerous on every level. It’s already proven to be life-and-death dangerous, and not just on Jan. 6.
Just last week Mark Aguirre, a former Houston police captain, was indicted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after holding the driver of an A/C repair truck at gunpoint in October 2020. A conservative group had paid Aguirre more than $266,000 to investigate vote fraud and he was sure the truck held 750,000 fake ballots signed by Hispanic children. He was wrong and "we are lucky no one was killed,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.
Angst is rising among those of us impatient to see investigations and punishment that match this moment, when U.S. democracy is teetering on the edge of failure. State authorities as well as President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and – most essentially – Attorney General Merrick Garland must make examples of public officials who created chaos and brought America to the brink, all so Trump could stay president for life, or until he got bored. They aren't fit to lead or serve in any capacity.
Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Punish Trump and those in Congress who betrayed voters and America
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