GOP Sen. Josh Hawley loses top donors after trying to overturn election

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has lost the support of another prominent GOP megadonor over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

“Sometimes politicians deceive their donors,” billionaire Jeffrey Yass recently wrote in an email, published by the Guardian on Monday, explaining his disappointment in Hawley’s actions. Yass, co-founder of trading firm Susquehanna International Group, has donated tens of millions to the right-wing Club for Growth, which spent millions of dollars on Hawley’s 2018 victory.

A Hawley spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.

Former supporters and media outlets have urging significant punishments for the first-term Republican senator after he helped spread false claims about the 2020 election, cheered on violent insurrectionists not long before they mounted a deadly attempted coup, and voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Since Election Day, Hawley elevated debunked conspiracy theories suggesting that Donald Trump — not President-elect Joe Biden — was the real victor.

He was the first senator to say he would object to certifying the Electoral College results.

“Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard,” he tweeted on Dec. 30. “I will object on January 6 on their behalf.”

As pro-Trump extremists gathered outside the Capitol prior to the joint session of Congress, Hawley greeted them with a fist pump and a thumbs up.

Another disappointed top GOP donor, roofing magnate David Humphreys, told the Missouri Independent earlier this month that he now believes Hawley to be a “political opportunist” who provoked the riots through “irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics” and should be censured by his colleagues.

Humphreys gave millions to Hawley’s campaign for Missouri attorney general in 2016 and backed him in his 2018 Senate race by more than $2 million in donations through outside political committees.

Cerner, a Missouri-based health information technology company, told the Kansas City Star last week, that its PAC would suspend donations to Hawley and other GOP lawmakers who “took part in or incited violence.” The political action committee has previously given at least $10,000 to Hawley’s leadership PAC.

Hawley’s mentor, former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), also denounced his former protégé.

“Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the riots. “Yesterday was the physical culmination of the long attempt [by Hawley and others] to foment a lack of public confidence in our democratic system. It is very dangerous to America to continue pushing this idea that government doesn’t work and that voting was fraudulent.”

Hawley is not the only Republican facing significant blowback for trying to overturn the election results.

Former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), the former mentor of current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, called out his one-time employee on Friday for backing Trump’s “phony lies” about the election.

Dozens of major corporations have announced that they are suspending PAC donations to Republicans who voted to object to Biden’s electors being counted, according to a round-up by Popular Information. And more than a dozen newspaper editorial boards around the country have urged those who stoked the insurrection be expelled from Congress.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.