GOP lawmakers aren't backing down after helping to incite deadly Capitol riot

The repetition by lawmakers that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from loser Donald Trump helped spur his supporters to storm the Capitol Jan. 6 during the joint session of Congress to certify the results of voting in the Electoral College and the election of Joe Biden.

That hasn’t stopped the GOP lawmakers who fought to steal the election from continuing to spread the same lies as before.

Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who spoke at the rally before the attacks and voted against the certification of Electoral College votes, tweeted the day after the riot, “In the past, when citizens of a Republic lose faith in their ability to guide the destiny of their country via the election process, they have been FORCED by that country’s rulers into a box and FORCED to chose from any of 3 bad options: 1. Flee (emigrate). 2. Submit. 3. Fight back with violence. THAT is why we must fight for honest & accurate elections. We don’t ever want citizens in America feeling they have been forced into the aforesaid box, with 3 bad options.”

In a statement released on Jan. 12, Brooks defended his objection to electoral vote certification and continued to lay blame for the rampage by Trump supporters elsewhere, writing, “Those who engaged in the illegal breach of the U.S. Capitol could not have done more damage if they had followed any script written by the Democrat National Committee. I take great offense at anyone who suggests I am so politically inexperienced as to want to torpedo my honest and accurate election system effort I spent months fighting on.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a statement the day after the attempted coup in which he claimed, “Since Election Day, millions of Americans have shared concerns about the integrity of our nation’s electoral process. Congress has the responsibility to listen to these concerns to help heal our nation, investigate, and work with states to make necessary reforms to our electoral process, particularly when its integrity comes into question.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado continued to churn out rhetoric about a stolen election in the aftermath of the attack, posting a video to Twitter on Jan. 8, in which she told her followers, “First of all, I want you all to know how proud I am to have taken a stand on the Electoral College certification. The onslaught that we have seen on our Electoral College from the Democrats is what got me involved with this to begin with.”

“Nothing that has happened in the past few days changes the fact that election laws were in fact broken,” Boebert said.

Boebert tweeted on Jan. 9: “Hillary must be pissed it took the DNC until 2020 to successfully rig an election.” Twitter slapped the tweet with a warning that reads, “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted or liked due to a risk of violence.” However, the platform had not removed the tweet.

QAnon supporter and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted Tuesday night, “President Trump will remain in office. This Hail Mary attempt to remove him from the White House is an attack on every American who voted for him. Democrats must be held accountable for the political violence inspired by their rhetoric.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared on Fox Report Weekend Sunday and continued to question the results of the election: “[Trump] will continue to weigh in on matters that are important to the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him, who believe that the election process that we went through in 2020 still deserves more scrutiny and who expect that there will still be a constituency of people fighting for the America First agenda.”

On Tuesday, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted that impeachment efforts would only incense pro-Trump extremists further: “It pours gas on the smoldering embers which consists of tens of millions who have serious doubts about election integrity.”

Experts have said such inflammatory rhetoric fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that left five dead.

“All of this was fuelled by President Trump and his election lawyers who have been making endless and evidence-less claims about the November election being ‘rigged’ for weeks,” Daniel Jones, president of the nonprofit Advance Democracy, Inc., told the Australian network the ABC. “The increasingly hostile online rhetoric was bound to turn into real world violence.”

The Anti-Defamation League said in a public statement that the storming of the Capitol was foreseeable and preventable.

“As ADL has said again and again, extremists must be taken at their word. First there was volatile rhetoric online, then explicit calls to violence and now people are acting on those calls in the nation’s capital and flagrantly breaking the law,” the organization said.

News reports have suggested that insiders within the House helped coordinate the violent attempted coup, and law enforcement in Washington, D.C., and state capitals are preparing for any further violence as Inauguration Day approaches.

In a video posted late Tuesday night, acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen warned, “I want to send a clear message to anyone contemplating violence, threats of violence or other criminal conduct: We will have no tolerance whatsoever for any attempts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 20 that our Constitution calls for. We will have no tolerance for any attempts to forcefully occupy government buildings. There will be no excuse for violence, vandalism or any other form of lawlessness.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.