The House Ethics Committee has declined to investigate claims that Reps. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) had any involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The Republican congressmen on June 15 released notices they received from Committee Chairman Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who said the panel won’t create a special investigative subcommittee to look into their alleged actions in the days leading up to Jan. 6, when a group of protesters breached the Capitol building complex.
While Brooks had no comment on the committee’s decision, Gosar said the accusation that he helped instigate the Jan. 6 incident was baseless and politically motivated.
“This patently baseless claim attempted to conflate political disagreements with ethics,” Gosar
said in a statement, adding that the House Ethics Committee, which includes an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, “should not be politicized for partisan purposes.”
The notices came a day after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) announced that she also was cleared by the panel. The matter began after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)
filed three separate complaints in March, alleging that Boebert, Brooks, and Gosar were somehow responsible for the breach of the Capitol, which she said endangered the lives of their colleagues. All three were among the 120 House Republicans who voted to reject the Electoral College results from Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.
“Representative Boebert endangered fellow members’ lives and pursued a disinformation campaign related to the election results that resulted in an armed uprising,” Jayapal wrote in one of the complaints. “Representative Boebert has not apologized for her statements leading up to the January 6 riot and continued to claim that the election was stolen.”
Boebert said on June 14 that the complaint filed against her was partisan in nature and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
“I would love to see how many taxpayer dollars Rep. Jayapal wasted on this ridiculous ethics complaint rehashing leftist media talking points and offering no real substance,” the first-time congresswoman
said in a statement. “She represents the worst of the entrenched swamp creatures who waste taxpayer money on partisan crusades and endless investigations. Luckily, the House Committee on Ethics saw through Rep. Jayapal’s posturing and dismissed her ethics complaint.”
Jayapal has also filed similar ethics charges against the three Republican lawmakers to the
Office of Congressional Ethics, which doesn’t include members of Congress, but acts as an independent, nonpartisan entity consisting primarily of attorneys and other professionals with expertise in ethics law and investigations. The office has yet to rule on any of Jayapal’s complaints.
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