What About the Congressional Coup Conspirators?
Those congressional henchmen who actively conspired with Trump to overthrow democracy also need to be held accountable.
Lest we forget, there are multiple members of Congress who conspired with Donald Trump to carry out his January 6, 2021 coup attempt. Why are they not being prosecuted? If not now, when? Will they ever be?
Sources told Rolling Stone in October 2021 that the following congresspeople were implicated in Trump’s plot: Marjorie Taylor Greene (D-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Mo Brooks (R-AK), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Subsequent reporting also includes Scott Perry (R-PA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH). And then there are the staffers who did the footwork.
This week, the Fulton County, Georgia DA filed one indictment with 41 felony counts relating to election interference against Trump, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sydney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro; his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, ex-DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and a number of fake electors. No congress members named in that indictment either. Senator Lindsey Graham had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger twice to urge him to manipulate mail-in ballots. Sounds like election interference to me. Will he ever be held accountable?
1,069 people from almost every state have been charged with crimes involving the January 6 assault on the Capitol, including around 350 with attacking or resisting law enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department. As of early July, 594 have pled guilty — 160 to felonies and 434 to misdemeanors. Of those, 561 have been sentenced, 335 of them to prison. Maximum sentence so far is 18 years.
That Special Counsel Jack Smith has indicted Trump for election interference and mishandling classified documents is very encouraging, as is the Georgia legal action. The actions show the country that justice isn’t reserved solely for the foot soldiers. But, like the term or not, January 6 encompassed a vast rightwing conspiracy to seize the government. Key players were members of Congress:
Senator Ron Johnson: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, “After initially claiming to be ‘basically unaware’ of an effort by his staff to get fake presidential elector documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday he coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along such information.” Johnson clearly played a role in the conspiracy to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Rep. Scott Perry: The Freedom Caucus chair worked hard to get DOJ official and Trump ally Jeffrey Clark named Attorney General. Trump identified Clark as key in his pressure campaign to get state legislatures to appoint fake electors. Perry’s cell phone, which was confiscated by the FBI, revealed a “multi-pronged push for Executive Branch officials to take more aggressive action,” according to court documents.
Rep. Jim Jordan: The January 6 Select Committee describes Jordan as a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. “He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud,” the report says. “On January 2, 2021, Representative Jordan led a conference call in which he, President Trump, and other Members of Congress discussed strategies for delaying the January 6th joint session.”
Rep. Paul Gosar: POLITICO reports, “Witnesses described Gosar as one of the most ubiquitous players. Ali Alexander, the leader of the pro-Trump ‘Stop the Steal’ effort, put Gosar among a small group of members who might relay updates after speaking to Trump. He also said Gosar supported his push for a Washington protest on Jan. 6. Other witnesses said Gosar was a member of a Twitter direct message thread that helped organize Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and related events.”
The January 6 House Select Committee disclosed that six members of Congress, all Republicans and staunch Trump supporters, sought preemptive pardons from the White House: Mo Brooks of Alabama, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Who seeks an advance pardon unless they know they have committed crimes?
A deeply polarized nation ensconced in growing litigation involving January 6 plotters from the foot soldiers to the president might not be able to also handle mass investigations and indictments of a sizable number of GOP members of Congress. Doing so could also bring on a Constitutional crisis not to mention civil strife.
Few realize that we’ve been down this road before.
I recently read an eye-opening book, Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States, by Bradley W. Hart. It tells the undertold story of pro-fascist Americans in the years leading up to World War II who wittingly served Hitler’s interests. Groups included not only the America First movement, the German American Bund and the Silver Legion, but also members of academia, conservative media, big business and Congress.
Some collaborated with the German Reich to plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist regime. They included 24 members of the House and Senate who, wittingly collaborated with a German agent. Foremost among these were senators Ernest Lundeen (R-MN), Gerald P. Nye (R-ND) and Burton Wheeler (R-MT) and representative Hamilton Fish (R-NY).
In 1942, the DOJ, acting on evidence collected by the FBI, charged 23 individuals with sedition, none of them members of Congress. Prosecutors, however, bungled the case, which fell apart upon the death of the inept presiding judge. Furthermore, the powerful senators who collaborated with the German agent exerted pressure on the DOJ to close the case, as did President Harry Truman, who didn’t want a messy sedition scandal involving members of Congress on top of such monumental burdens as bringing World War II to a close, confronting a new Cold War, putting the economy back on a peacetime track, etc.
While the seditious politicians managed to skate justice, they met accountability politically, virtually all having lost re-election in the wake of exposés of their treasonous actions.
While Donald Trump’s legal reckoning finally reaches fruition, it is important that there be a full accountability to include those congressional henchmen who actively conspired with him to overthrow democracy. It would constitute a failure of our constitutional system if they too skated justice as their predecessors in treason had managed to do eight decades previously.