Judicial Watch: Maxine Waters Violated House Rules by ‘Inciting Violence’

Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group, sent a letter to the House Office of Congressional Ethics Monday, calling for an ethics investigation into Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) to determine if she violated House ethics rules by encouraging violence against Trump administration officials.

In the group’s letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton suggested that Waters violated House rules when she encouraged “crowds” of people to “push back” on Trump administration officials at private business establishments.

“Rep. Maxine Waters incited violence and assault against members of President Trump’s Cabinet,” Fitton said in a statement. “It is urgent that the House ethics quickly act to hold her accountable for this dangerous incitement.”

Waters told attendees of a rally in Los Angeles Saturday that people should “push back” against Trump administration officials and let them know they are not welcome.

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said at the rally, protesting against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy.”

Fitton wrote in the letter that by encouraging people to “push back” against officials at private businesses, she violated a House rule stating that a House member should behave in a way that would “reflect creditably on the House”: “A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall conduct himself at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House. [House Rule 23, clause 1.]”

Despite pushback from Democratic leadership, Waters doubled down on her comments in a press conference on Capitol Hill Monday, addressing reports about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant because she works for the Trump administration.