Seven Senate Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley with an aim to finding out just how far the two went in inciting the January 6 armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The seven senators are Whitehouse, Wyden, Smith, Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine and Brown and they are not fooling around.
Thursday night, Sen. Mazie Hirono talked with Anderson Cooper about the complaint. She blasted Cruz and Hawley for “trying to overturn fair and free elections” and “perpetuating the big lie that this election was stolen and that Trump had actually won. That is the Big Lie, capital B, capital L.”
She pointed out that no matter how many House members had objected to certifying the Electoral College results on January 6, the effort “would have gotten nowhere” without the senators’ objections.
"So here you have both Senators Cruz and Hawley practically stepping over each other to say, 'look at us, we're the ones that's gonna help you folks object,' perpetuating the Big Lie, which we saw led to the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol and five people dying, hundreds being arrested," Hirono said.
But did Cruz and Hawley do more than that to help incite the armed insurrection? Hirono and her colleagues want to know what kind of relationship there was between the two senators and the leaders of the rally and the riot, including what the senators may have known about the rioters’ plans and whether they received any money from anyone connected with the riot.
“They had to have known full well that they were perpetuating a Big Lie,” Hirono continued, noting that “dozens of lawsuits” were thrown out for lack of evidence of election fraud. Cruz and Hawley are lawyers, she added, so “they should have known what they were doing was totally irresponsible, leading to what happened at the U.S. Capitol.”
Here's the complaint:
JUST IN: 7 Senate Democrats file ethics complaint "concerning the behavior of Sens. Cruz and Hawley related to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6."
Sens. Whitehouse, Wyden, Smith, Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine and Brown sent the complaint to the Senate Ethics Cmte pic.twitter.com/SpcLUErvrP— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 21, 2021
