11-14-2020, 12:42 AM
(11-13-2020, 10:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This ought to be good for quick censure in the next Congress. Advocating violence and acts of at most marginal legality involving a federal election (for president) is... well, fecal behavior.Kamala Harris lead a fund raiser to raise millions of dollars to bailout rioters. We are at war dude.
Republican Congressman Helped Organize Ugly Far-Right Protest Against Election Result
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) rallied in Maricopa County last week with extremists intent on undermining democracy.
Three days before Joe Biden was officially projected to win the presidency, a group of at least 150 Donald Trump supporters ― some of them armed militia members ― assembled in the parking lot outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, convinced the fix was in.
Nevermind that Fox News had called Arizona for Biden. Leaders of the AZ Patriots militia raged about Sharpiegate, a debunked conspiracy theory spread by Trump’s adult sons. Far-right activist Mike Cernovich barreled in from his home in Southern California to lead the crowd in a “Stop the Steal” chant and to lend his massive Twitter platform to the effort to delegitimize U.S. democracy.
But among the crowd peppered with extremists — some of whom may have violated local laws and intimidated election officials who continued to count ballots — was a member of Congress known for peddling disinformation and bigotry. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) played a key role in amplifying the rally only days after he easily won reelection in Arizona’s neighboring 4th Congressional District.
“We’re fighting to the bitter end,” Gosar told the crowd, speaking through a megaphone. “This is our Alamo.”
Earlier in the evening, AZ Patriots members had barged into the elections center, looking for nonexistent evidence of fraud. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputies politely escorted them out. Years of falsehoods from Trump and his right-wing propagandists had conditioned protesters to believe disinformation about a rigged election. And to hate the media.
Predictably, they soon turned their wrath on local television reporters there to cover the results, shouting profanities and “fake news” at them.
When Kim Powell, a reporter for the local CBS affiliate, arrived at the protest just before 8 p.m., protesters targeted her immediately. One Trump supporter yelling “fake news” approached Powell from behind in an effort to get on camera. Powell’s security guard blocked him. The protester then threatened to find where Powell and her cameraman live. He returned to the crowd and began pointing out the reporter to other people, according to Powell. Soon, five men began circling her and her cameraman, glaring at them. The journalists left, fearing for their safety.
“It almost felt like we were being circled by hyenas,” Powell told HuffPost. Her cameraman recorded footage of the initial harassment and filed a police report.
The protesters were so rowdy that election workers needed a police escort back to their cars at the end of the night. If the crowd caused those workers to feel threatened or intimidated, it would violate an Arizona law that prohibits interfering with election officers on duty, according to Tom Ryan, an attorney in nearby Chandler, Arizona, who specializes in election law.
“That’s a class 5 felony,” Ryan said. “That’s punishable with prison. That’s a serious felony.” The militia members who entered the election center may have committed that crime and, according to the attorney, “should have been arrested immediately.”
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for more information by the time of publication.
Ryan says the protest was clearly orchestrated. “This wasn’t just a grassroots swelling of citizens,” he said. “These people had pre-manufactured signs. They all showed up based on a social media notice to come to Maricopa County and protest.”
Gosar had more than a little to do with that. The congressman has two Twitter accounts ― one for his work as a federal official and a second, personal account. He used his personal Twitter to baselessly assert that “some shady things” were happening in Arizona. He also used Twitter to coordinate Wednesday’s protest with Cernovich, a longtime dirty trickster who works with numerous far-right extremists. The original plan was to rally outside the Arizona State Capitol building, but the organizers soon shifted the location to the elections center.
For years, law enforcement and social media executives have allowed Cernovich, who did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, to spread disinformation that has real-world, sometimes dangerous, effects. In 2016, he and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec, who is now a One America News correspondent, orchestrated Pizzagate, which almost got diners in a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant killed. Since then, Gosar has interacted with Cernovich on Twitter many times, frequently praising the Kremlin-amplified propagandist.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/paul-gosar-far-right-protest-arizona_n_5fada218c5b6370e7e311861
Personal comment: what part of "Awful, awful, quite unlawful!" do you not understand?