Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Thursday compared a 2016 congressional sit-in led by the late civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
It was just the latest in Republican attempts to minimize the mob attack on Congress earlier this year. But it was an especially extreme example: Lewis led the day-long sit-in in the House chamber, joined by several other lawmakers, to build pressure for gun control legislation.
“Where is the heart of this body?” Lewis said in a speech at the start of the sit-in, which came a few days after the Orlando nightclub mass shooting that left 49 people dead. “Where is our soul? Where is our moral leadership? Where is our courage?”
The members of Congress who participated in the sit-in, Gohmert told Attorney General Merrick Garland in a hearing, actually committed the crime of which so many Capitol attackers now stand accused: Obstructing an official proceeding.
“On June 22 of 2016, judge, most of the Democrat members of Congress took over the House floor, and, for the first time in American history, members of Congress obstructed official proceedings,” Gohmert said.
“Not for 4 to 6 hours, but for virtually 26 hours,” he continued. “Not just violating over a dozen House rules, but actually committing the felony that some of the Jan. 6 people are charged with.”
Gohmert noted that “nobody has been charged” for the sit-in, despite Jan. 6 defendants being “viciously” prosecuted for the same thing.
“Tho se kinds of things — where you let Democrat members of Congress off for the very thing that you’re viciously going after people that were protesting on Jan. 6 — gives people the indication that there is a two-tiered justice system here in America,” the congressman said.
Later in the hearing of the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) called Gohmert’s comparison “disgraceful.”
The bizarre comparison came just a day after a spokesperson for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) acknowledged that Johnson was holding up a Justice Department nomination — Biden’s pick to be the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves — over yet another false equivalence to Jan. 6.
Johnson is one of several authors of a June letter to the DOJ expressing “concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States” — specifically the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations that occurred nationwide following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Johnson’s spokesperson told Business Insider that the hold on Graves’ nomination was meant to pressure the DOJ to respond to the senators’ June letter.
Neo-Fascist says what?
Oh, this is gonna be good. Everyone lean in for the pearls of wisdom.
So, like, did anyone here expect anything else from Mr Big Brainbox Gohmert?? Anyone?? Anyone at all??? No??
Thought not.
(It must really be something going through life that stupid.)
Hey, remember when Rep. Lewis savagely killed Capitol police with fire extinguishers and Trump flags?
Yah, me neither.
“I’ve had people say, 'Hey, you know, there’s nothing wrong with gays in the military. Look at the Greeks. Well, you know, they did have people come along who they loved that was the same sex and would give them massages before they went into battle.”
“But you know what, it’s a different kind of fighting, it’s a different kind of war and if you’re sitting around getting massages all day ready to go into a big, planned battle, then you’re not going to last very long,” Gohmert said. “It’s guerrilla fighting. You are going to be ultimately vulnerable to terrorism and if that’s what you start doing in the military like the Greeks did … as people have said, ‘Louie, you have got to understand, you don’t even know your history.’ Oh yes I do. I know exactly. It’s not a good idea.”
Gohmert is a blooming idiot and a racist too. Enough said.