A new petition is urging voters to tell their representatives not to seat insurrectionist Reps. Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Green in the House.
The petition from Free Speech For People and MoveOn tells voters ask their representative to challenge the qualifications of Gosar, Boebert, and Greene under the disqualification clause.
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The coordinated and violent attack on the United States Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying the presidential vote on January 6, 2021 was an insurrection against the United States.
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that anyone who has previously sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, and then engages in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States (or provides “aid or comfort” to its enemies) is permanently disqualified from holding future public office.
Publicly available evidence establishes that Rep. Paul Gosar helped facilitate the insurrection, before, during, and after January 6, 2021. Not only was he among a handful of Congress members who expressed vocal support for the insurrection as it was happening , but, according to news reports, Gosar went so far as to offer organizers of the pre-attack demonstration a “blanket pardon” in connection with unrelated criminal investigations, encouraging what would no doubt be an illegal act of violence.
In the weeks leading up to January 6, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly stated that violence might be necessary to keep Trump in power, exhorted her followers not to allow Congress to transfer power peacefully, and, the night before the attack, called the date “our 1776 moment” (a codeword used by violent extremists to refer to an attack on government buildings). Greene has since attempted to defend the violence on January 6 as justified by the Declaration of Independence, calling convicted participants in the insurrections “political prisoners of war”. In December 2022, she bragged that “if” she had organized the attack, “we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert echoed Greene’s coded sentiments during the insurrection, tweeting “Today is 1776.” She was billed as a speaker for the pre-attack Capitol protest, though she did not speak. Three days prior to the insurrection, Boebert released an ad featuring herself walking through federal buildings while brandishing a firearm, pledging to carry a handgun in the Capitol despite DC laws banning open carry. In addition, two Jan. 6th organizers told Rolling Stone of “dozens” of planning meetings with Boebert and several other Congress members in the days leading up to the insurrection.
It takes a two-thirds vote in the House to disqualify a member, and with Republicans holding a narrow four-seat majority, the odds that one-third of House Republicans would vote to disqualify the Three Musketeers of insurrection are exactly zero.
Pressure and petitions like this one matter because they keep the behavior of House Republicans who supported Trump’s coup in the public mind. The petition won’t be successful, but it is a reminder that Americans have not forgotten about 1/6.
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