During a Tuesday appearance on CBS’s “The Late Show,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called on her GOP colleagues that sought pardons from former President Donald Trump over the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to be “expelled” from Congress.
In testimony provided to the House Select Committee investigating the riot, Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Scott Perry (R-PA) were all named as having asked Trump for pardons.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that those members of Congress “were willing to commit crimes in order to illegally seize power.” She added they needed “to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“I will say, bare minimum, those who specifically thought pardons for themselves should be expelled from the United States House of Representatives … beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Ocasio-Cortez told host Stephen Colbert.
“Because if you are a duly elected official and in seeking a pardon, as you mentioned, you are consciously committing — you are admitting to committing a crime,” she continued. “What that means is that they were willing to commit crimes in order to illegally seize power, and no person of any power, and of any seat, of any party, should be willing to do that in order to undermine our democracy. But that’s just the bare minimum.”
“I do believe that many of these individuals need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in order to establish and to prove to ourselves and to the world that there is rule of law in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
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