Josh Hawley rakes in nearly $1 million after egging on Capitol rioters

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who came under fire last month for his part in fanning the flames of the violent Capitol insurrection, raised $969,000 in January from small-dollar Republican donors, according to a Monday memo from his campaign, first flagged by Axios.

The monthly amount is the most his campaign has raised since October 2018, a month before he was elected as senator, the outlet noted.

Just before pro-Donald Trump extremists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, to stop certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, Hawley sent a fundraising email highlighting his plan to object to the vote, the Kansas City Star noted.

Hawley also sent a fundraising text message as the mob was racing through the Capitol, ransacking offices and trying to find lawmakers and former Vice President Mike Pence, who they said they wanted to kill for refusing to overturn the election for Trump. The message said Hawley was “leading the charge to fight for free and fair election,” according to the Star.

Hawley in fact helped incite those riots. Prior to the joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s win, the Missouri lawmaker was photographed outside the Capitol building, raising his fist in solidarity with the pro-Trump mob.

He also played a role in pushing Trump’s oft-repeated lies of widespread fraud and a stolen election — debunked by his own administration — that led the crowd to storm the building in the first place.

Hawley was the first senator to pledge to object to Biden’s Electoral College certification, tweeting on Dec. 30, “Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard. I will object on January 6 on their behalf.”

Hawley, however, has continued to insist he did nothing wrong, telling a local St. Louis radio station, “I never said that the goal was to overturn the election. That was never the point and it was never possible.” He stressed that in blocking Biden’s certification, he was simply trying to protect “election integrity.”

Hawley has lost some top donors in the weeks since the Capitol riots.

Top GOP donor David Humphreys, a roofing magnate who backed Hawley in 2018, called Hawley an “anti-democracy populist” who employed “irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics” to provoke the insurrection in a statement to the Missouri Independent the day after the attack. Humphreys also called for Hawley to be censured.

Missouri-based health information technology company Cerner, which has previously given at least $10,000 to Hawley’s leadership PAC, told the Kansas City Star that its political action committee would suspend donations to Hawley for his part in inciting violence.

Former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), who mentored Hawley, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this month, “Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.