Some folks who know Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar up close and personal says he is a hardcore right-wing extremist with close ties to violent militia groups and should be considered an enemy of the people.
“He’s been involved with anti-Muslim groups and hate groups,” says one. “He’s made anti-Semitic diatribes. He’s twisted up so tight with the Oath Keepers it’s not even funny. We warn everyone how dangerous he is.”
Those comments to The New York Times came from Dave Gosar, a Wyoming lawyer who is also the Congressman’s brother. He and other siblings ran ads denouncing their brother as a “dangerous extremist.”
Republicans like such extremists.
The ultra-violent Oath Keepers militia openly backs Gosar. In the group’s video, “The Coming Civil War,” they cite his support. They say he supports a new civil war, telling the group “We’re in it. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.”
Gosar is not alone in Congress when it comes to cozying up to violent militias.
Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert “has close connections to militia groups, including the so-called Three Percenters, an extremist offshoot of the gun rights movement,” reports the Times.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents were among the most visible of those who stormed the building, and she appeared at a rally with militia groups. Before being elected to Congress last year, she used social media in 2019 to endorse executing top Democrats and has suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a staged “false flag” attack.
Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared last year at an event also attended by members of the Proud Boys, another extremist organization whose role in the Jan. 6 assault, like those of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, is being investigated by the F.B.I.
Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But Mr. Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Their ranks include Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who like Mr. Gosar was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s outcome.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls such members of Congress the “enemy within” the legislative branch of the United States government.
“It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress,” Pelosi said on the floor of the House Thursday.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican called Pelosi “a threat” and a supporter of “socialism.” She adds that journalists are “co-conspirators” of Pelosi.
On Facebook, Greene has called for violence against Democrats and urged her supporters to “shoot Pelosi in the head.”
Earlier this month, GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland set off metal detectors at the entrance to the Congressional House chamber of the Capitol. He had a concealed weapon. While members of Congress are allowed to carry weapons in the District of Columbia, they are not permitted to do so in the House and Senate champers of the Capitol.
To date, federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people for their roles in the riot that shut down Congress and brought the murder of a Capitol Police officer. A number of those charged included off-duty police officers from around the country, active members of our armed forces and veterans.
It’s time to slap the handcuffs on some members of Congress. They are traitors and must be treated as such.
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