ENDANGERED: House Jan. 6th committee members receive full-time security details as threats pour in
How do we know that the televised hearings conducted by the House Jan. 6th Committee are particularly effective in raising the national awareness of the severity of the crimes committed by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in plotting that likely amounts to a seditious conspiracy? Well, the sharp increase in the number of violent threats against the members of the committee in the past 24 hours is one sure sign that its message is resonating, at least amongst the supporters of the people being exposed as the conspirators. Now, The Washington Post reports that the threats have become so pervasive that a security detail is likely to be assigned to every committee member, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.
This past weekend, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only two Republican members of the committee, announced that his wife had received a heinous letter threatening to execute her and the couple’s 5-month-old baby.
Here is the letter. Addressed to my wife, sent to my home, threatening the life of my family. The Darkness is spreading courtesy of cowardly leaders fearful of truth. Is the what you want @GOP? Pastors?
https://t.co/YimZJcFp4W pic.twitter.com/BBgZ6Teur3
— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) June 19, 2022
Kinzinger attributed the threat to his participation on the committee but said that the blame for the political violence both on January 6th, 2021, and in the foreseeable future stems from a direct consequence of his own Republican Party’s litany of lies surrounding the election results.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger said in an appearance on ABC’s This Week. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
The threats against Rep. Kinzinger, branding him a traitor to his party, are also something that the only other Republican on the committee has faced. Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) “has been flanked with a security detail since last year, and has been unable to hold large, publicized campaign events, in part due to security concerns, according to aides,” The Washington Post writes.
With a different committee member taking the lead in questioning witnesses in each of the committee’s hearings so far, the need for security details for every member of the committee to receive heightened security protection is obvious, if an incredibly sad statement on the state of American politics in the post-Trump era.
Evidence of threats made against election officials across the country in the wake of Donald trump’s election lies has been a prominent feature of the testimony that the committee has presented in its televised hearings to date, with Georgia election worker Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss presenting a compelling story of how her grandmother was confronted at her own front door by extremists barging into her home and seeking to make a phony citizen’s arrest.
The next televised committee hearing — which has been postponed until July due to the flood of new evidence pouring into the panel that must be first reviewed for new bombshells — is scheduled to focus on the culture of radical extremism and political violence that Trump’s “Big Lie” enabled and encouraged.
Expect that threats from the people who created and nurtured that culture of political violence will only increase the need for security for the committee members and anyone else who stands in their way of establishing a White nationalist ethnostate out of America’s gorgeous mosaic.
Let’s hope that the committee’s work winds up providing the evidence that sends the most dangerous of this crowd to prison for the rest of their lives.
Original reporting by Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, and Jacqueline Alemany at The Washington Post.
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