Expel Josh Hawley

By John Nichols

The Missouri senator is just as guilty as Trump. As the Senate gears up for the impeachment trial, some senators are beginning to look at Hawley too.

Were the irre­deemable task of mount­ing a defense for Donald Trump at his Senate impeach­ment tri­al to fall to me, I would sim­ply point to the pres­ence of Josh Hawley among the jurors. Then I would rest my case.
If Trump’s chief accom­plice in the incite­ment to insur­rec­tion on January 6 is allowed to con­tin­ue to serve in the cham­ber, the cyn­i­cal argu­ment would go, how can sen­a­tors seri­ous­ly argue that the 45^th pres­i­dent should be held to account?
Needless to say, I won’t be mak­ing that defense, or any oth­er, for Donald Trump. I couldn’t with a straight face rec­om­mend that the dis­graced for­mer pres­i­dent be let off the hook. They’ve got him on tape—and on Twitter — incit­ing the vio­lent mob that invad­ed the US Capitol in order to over­turn the results of the 2020 elec­tion. Trump’s guilty of the high crime with which he has been charged. He must be con­vict­ed by the Senate and barred from ever again occu­py­ing pub­lic office.
Yet the Hawley conun­drum remains. He is just as guilty as Trump, just as respon­si­ble for what hap­pened on January 6.“But for him it wouldn’t have hap­pened,” for­mer Missouri sen­a­tor John Danforth, a Republican who helped to launch his fel­low Missourian’s career, says of Hawley’s role in the Capitol inva­sion. “But for him the approval of the Electoral College votes would have been sim­ply a for­mal­i­ty. He made it into…a spe­cif­ic way to express the view that the elec­tion was stolen. He was responsible.”
Read the full sto­ry here; https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​e​x​p​e​l​-​j​o​s​h​-​h​a​w​l​e​y​-​i​n​s​u​r​r​e​c​t​i​on/