The U.S. House Committee on Ethics has dismissed an ethics complaint against Rep. Paul Gosar filed against him by Rep. Pramila Jayapal for his objection to the seating of electors. Jaypal filed the complaint despite the fact that she engaged in the same activity in 2017.
“This patently baseless claim attempted to conflate political disagreements with ethics. The House Committee on Ethics should not be politicized for partisan purposes,” said Gosar in a press release.
Jayapal filed an ethics complaint on March 10, 2021, against Gosar alleging that his actions on January 6, 2021, particularly in objecting to the seating of electors, violated one or more rules of ethics. Gosar alleges that she did this “in spite of evidence to the contrary.”
Gosar questioned how Jayapal could ignore her own objection in 2017 to the seating of electors for President Trump in the filing of her 2021 complaint.
Gosar contends that taking political disagreements and re-framing them as ethics violations is “improper, unethical and fully lacking in decorum.”
Know this: I have never instigated violence. I have no criminal record of any type.1 I have never aided or abetted violence. I have not urged or supported violence. A review of Jayapal’s unsupported, baseless, and fraudulent allegations suggest they are devoid of reality and smothered in Blue Anon conspiracy theories, ad hominem attacks, and baseless speculation.
Alleging that I have somehow acted criminally, or against the country I love and protect, is defamatory and reckless.
The civil courts will resolve that issue. However, I can categorically state I have not violated any Ethics rule or violated the acceptable, and long tolerated, parameters for political speech in this nation.
Indeed, her reckless claim that I was “involved[] in instigating and aiding the violent riot at the Capitol Building” is despicable in view of the actual facts. I had every right to file an objection to the certification of the electors. Just as she did in January 2017:
Addressing a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2017, Jayapal stood and objected to the certification of the Electoral College vote. She tried to cite evidence of voter suppression in Georgia. 2
I did not then accuse her of acting unethically for pursuing what she found troubling. Her misguided, dishonest and inflammatory effort to paint my objections as unethical should be dismissed with prejudice with a finding of filing a frivolous ethics complaint.
In a “fact-check,” Newsweek reported:
In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227. During the joint session on January 6, 2017, seven House Democrats tried to object to electoral votes from multiple states.
According to a C-SPAN recording of the joint session that took place four years ago, the following House Democrats made objections:
Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) objected to Alabama’s votes.
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) objected to Florida’s votes.
Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) objected to Georgia’s votes.
Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) objected to North Carolina’s votes.
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) objected to the votes from North Carolina in addition to votes from South Carolina and Wisconsin. She also stood up and objected citing “massive voter suppression” after Mississippi’s votes were announced.
Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) brought up allegations of Russian interference in the election and malfunctioning voting machines when she objected following the announcement of Michigan’s votes.
Maxine Waters (D-Calif) rose and said, “I do not wish to debate. I wish to ask ‘Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?'” after the announcement of Wyoming’s votes.
For an objection to be considered, it must be submitted in writing and signed by a member of both the House and Senate. Because no senators signed onto the objections made by House Democrats in 2017, then-Vice President Biden by law denied all of the objections, repeatedly saying “there is no debate.”