The certification of individual states’ electors before a joint-session of Congress on Jan. 6 needed to be tabled for nearly seven hours after domestic terrorists breached the grounds of the Capitol, leaving five dead.
America watched an institution of democracy come under threat as insurrectionists attempted to obstruct a legally constituted procedure that happens every presidential election.
In the prior weeks, many Republican members of Congress spun the falsehood of wide-scale voter fraud and broadcasted their effort to stall the mandated certification of electoral votes despite repeated warnings from experts and analysts in political violence.
Despite former President Trump’s victory in Florida, Florida Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate signaled before the insurrection that they were conspiring to overturn the election results in up to six states.
Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Alachua, claimed just a day after her Jan. 3 swearing-in ceremony that, “The courts, not state legislatures, were making decisions about the states’ elections, and once that has failed, Congress has to step in.”
The court cases she referred to were brought by litigants on behalf of Trump, of which over fifty were tossed, withdrawn, or settled.
It is important to note that Sidney Powell, Trump’s former lawyer, is one of a series of defendants, alongside Fox News and some of its hosts, named in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic aimed at “the disinformation campaign.”
Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now facing disbarment for inciting the mob at the ‘Save America’ rally when he screamed, “Let’s have trial by combat!” Another Trump litigant, Lin Wood, even publicly called for the execution of former Vice President Mike Pence and the arrest of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Cammack’s predecessor, former Rep. Ted Yoho, was one of 11 House members who signed on as amicus curiae supporting Texas’s failed lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results.
The lawsuit sought to block Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from certifying their tallies in the Electoral College based on disproven claims of fraud.
On Jan. 6th, 11 House members from Florida joined Cammack in objecting to Arizona’s slate of electors before the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, an event that failed to rock the congresswomen’s conviction as she would vote to object to Pennsylvania’s electors once Congress reconvened.
Cammack’s decision to avoid taking responsibility for spreading Trump’s election falsehoods has led to public outcry and calls for her resignation just weeks into her nascent term.
A Monmouth University poll showing that the majority of Americans who back the impeachment of Trump failed to sway Cammack to buck the overwhelming majority of her party, stating that her decision to not bring the charge of ‘incitement to insurrection’ against Trump is based on her belief that “our country needs unity now more than ever.”
Kat Cammack voted ‘no’ on impeaching Trump for the second time, saying that there was “no due process in the impeachment vote that we just took.”
Featured image: Congresswoman Kat Cammack in 2020. Unmodified image by Gage Skidmore used under a Creative Commons license. (https://bit.ly/37f7NmW).
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