Black Congressman Threatened With Lynching

Congressman Al Green of Texas, after becom­ing the first Capitol Hill law­mak­er to offi­cial­ly call for impeach­ment charges against US President Donald Trump, was the recip­i­ent of death threats and hate speech after his Wednesday call to cite the pres­i­dent for obstruc­tion of justice.

© AP PHOTO/​ANDREW HARNIK

Dark Days in the Oval Office: Nearly Half of US Voters Want to Impeach Trump

“I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to call for the impeach­ment of the President of the United States of America for obstruc­tion of jus­tice,” accord­ing to Green’s offi­cial state­ment. “I do not do this for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, Mr. Speaker. I do this because I believe in the great ideals that this coun­try stands for — lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all, the notion that we should have gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, for the peo­ple. I do it because, Mr. Speaker, there is a belief in this coun­try that no one is above the law, and that includes the President of the United States of America.”

Following his Wednesday motion to begin the pro­ceed­ings to impeach Trump, Green was del­uged with death threats and hate speech, many by tele­phone, which he record­ed and played back for atten­dees at a town hall gath­er­ing in Houston on Saturday.

Although Green observed that most of the tele­phone calls were sup­port­ive of the Texas law­mak­er’s move to impeach the strik­ing­ly unpop­u­lar pres­i­dent, many callers were enraged, and includ­ed death threats and racial slurs rem­i­nis­cent of the dark days of seg­re­ga­tion in the US.

As report­ed by the Houston Chronicle, Green said to those attend­ing the meet­ing, “Actual record­ings will be played and you can decide for your­self what we’re deal­ing with,” before play­ing back the phone calls.

“You ain’t going to impeach nobody, you [exple­tive]. Try it and we’ll lynch all you [exple­tive] [N‑word] and you’ll be hang­ing from a tree,” stat­ed one caller.

“We’ve got an impeach­ment for you and it’s going to be yours,” said anoth­er caller, who added, “We’ll give you a short tri­al before we hang your [N‑word] [exple­tive].”

Green was not dis­suad­ed, stat­ing, “It does not deter us. We are not going to be intim­i­dat­ed. We are not going to allow this to cause us to devi­ate from what we believe to be the right thing to do and that is to pro­ceed with the impeach­ment of President Trump,” accord­ing to the Houston Chronicle.

The call for Trump’s impeach­ment comes after infor­ma­tion was revealed on Tuesday that the pres­i­dent asked then-FBI Director James Comey in February to end an inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Michael Flynn, a request con­sid­ered by many law­mak­ers to be evi­dence of an obstruc­tion of justice.
https://​sput​niknews​.com/​a​r​t​_​l​i​v​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​7​0​5​2​1​1​0​5​3​8​4​0​1​7​5​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​l​a​w​m​a​k​e​r​-​g​e​t​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​t​h​r​e​a​ts/