Congressional and Senate Republicans Who Incited Traitorous Attack Must Be Removed and Tried for Sedition

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 02:50 pm

The following is an editorial by PoliticusUSA‘s Editor in Chief Sarah Jones.

Now is not the time for “civility” or “turning the page.” Now is the time for members of Congress to find the courage to finally at long last protect this country and her people from the imminent and growing danger of Trump‘s white supremacists and extremists.

The Patriotic Millionaires issued a statement on President Trump’s incitement of a seditious attack on the U.S. Capitol, which not only called for immediate and severe consequences for the President, but also for those members of the House and Senate who incited the violent, armed insurrection must also be removed from office and tried for sedition.

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“President Trump must be impeached, removed from office and tried for sedition.

Members of the House and Senate who willfully and deliberately incited yesterday’s violent insurrection, and in doing so broke their Oath of Office and betrayed the American people, must be removed from office and tried for sedition,” Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director of BlackRock, Inc. wrote in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA.

Those members are Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss), John Neely Kennedy (LA), Roger Marshall (KS) and Tommy Tuberville (AL) and the 121 Republicans in the House, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (LA).

These are not the musings of far left progressives and indeed, even White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who represented Trump during his first impeachment trial, “is reportedly warning West Wing staffers to avoid Trump for legal reasons, and even Stephen Miller thought Wednesday was atrocious,” Gabe Sherman reported in Vanity Fair.

“The West Wing staffer told the friend that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was urging White House officials not to speak to Trump or enable his coup attempt in any way, so they could reduce the chance they could be prosecuted for treason under the Sedition Act.”

Pearl urged, “There must be consequences. They must be immediate. They must be severe. And they must unequivocally affirm our lawmakers’ and this nation’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.”

The letter also called attention to the specific motivation behind this incitement, which was to subvert the will of the people to the point of attacking the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the landslide election of President-Elect Joe Biden:

“The President of the United States sent a group of armed insurrectionists to attack the legislative body of the federal government in order to subvert the will of the American people who democratically elected someone else to lead the country.

The President of the United States actively recruited and nurtured this group of traitors, whipped them into a violent frenzy, and directed them to attack the Capitol.”

The letter also addressed the alarming inequity in treatment of these violent traitors, noting that they should be tried for sedition: “Any person who breached the security perimeter at the Capitol, with intent of disrupting the certification of electoral college vote, should be tried for sedition.”

Pearl is also concerned after hearing some members of Congress brushing off this violent act, having “stated their intention to ‘turn the page’ on this disgraceful moment in American history, wait for Trump to leave office on January 20th, and move forward as though the U.S. were not just attacked from within. That is unacceptable.”

“Their hope that the violent terrorist movement of white supremacists who attempted a coup on the United States yesterday will just go away is both pathetically naive and incredibly dangerous. This national cancer will not return to the dark recesses of the human psyche where it belongs until it is forced there. It is the Constitutional duty of every lawmaker in America to ensure that happens,” Pearl concluded.

Our Congressional members and Vice President Pence must realize that it’s not only the U.S. Capitol under siege, but here in the everyday lives of their constituents, people have been terrorized out of participating in the political process by right-wing extremists for YEARS. They kept people from voting in 2016. This writer hears daily how someone is afraid to leave their home or post support on Facebook — forget putting a yard sign up — for fear of violent retaliation from white supremacists and far-right extremists.

The responsible thing to do here is to hold every person who engaged in sedition accountable to the law as they surely would be if they had brown or black skin or were supporting a Democrat who incited violence.

Far right extremists are known to be the largest domestic threat we face and yet this fact has been purposefully ignored as our government caters to the feelings of these extremists for reasons unclear to this writer. This threat isn’t going to go away because they are given a pass. The psychology behind the extremist mindset is to keep going until stopped. This includes President Trump, and is the reason why I was against impeaching him when it was clear that Senate Republicans would never do their duty to convict him even with the evidence blaring on TV sets across America, and thus he would be emboldened to even more damaging behavior given his psychopathology. Trump is not a person who learns lessons.

In a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson called for Trump’s Republican congressional enablers to prosecuted, “Make no mistake, this is sedition and insurrection. People have long asked why the Lincoln Project has targeted Trump’s Republican allies, and today they have their answer. Those Republicans who have endorsed and encouraged Trump’s lawless coup attempt in the House and Senate deserve to be prosecuted, not seated in the halls of government.”

Everyone who incited and or engaged in this deadly action against their country must be held accountable and tried for sedition. Congress cannot allow these traitors to sit in the hallowed halls they incited violence upon to represent their constituents, when it is obvious they represent an enemy to this nation.