Jason Schmid, a top GOP aide in the House Armed Services Committee has resigned citing his disgust for the 147 Republican lawmakers who backed President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election after it fueled the U.S. Capitol’s deadly insurrection last week.
In a blistering resignation letter first obtained by Politico, the longtime congressional aide rebuked House Republicans who objected to President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory during the Jan. 6 joint session, which was abruptly paused as Trump’s supporters raided the building in an attack that sent lawmakers under desks and into bunkers to shelter in place and ultimately left five people dead.
“Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms,” Schmid wrote in the letter, calling perpetrators of the violence “domestic enemies of the Constitution.”
“Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the republic,” Schmid said.
The former aide chastised the GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee — where he has served for more than four years — for backing what he called a “poisonous lie” that the election was stolen.
Of those House Republicans who voted against Biden’s win in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) who is formally addressed in the letter, will be the committee’s top Republican. Twelve other GOP members of the committee joined Rogers’ in backing the charade.
Schmid’s resignation letter comes after the House unveiled an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” after Trump fueled his supporters to descend on the Capitol on Wednesday and then gleefully watched as they tore through barricades to raid the building.
The longtime aide said that “Congressional enablers” of the violent mobbing of the Capitol have further agitated the potential of foreign conflict, making it “more likely, not less.”
A former Army intelligence analyst who was wounded in Iraq, Schmid was also particularly pointed in his anger that members of the military had been involved in the attack calling for their immediate expulsion from the force, citing a loss of the “credibility needed to accomplish this work.”
“All of our words and actions in the coming weeks and days will reveal those who believe in defending the Constitution and those who stand only for self-interest and sectarianism,” Schmid wrote. “There can be no reconciliation and healing without accountability.”
Schmid’s resignation follows a series of others last week, including three Cabinet secretaries who resigned their posts in the aftermath of the attack, just days before Trump is set to leave office, including most recently acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf who announced his plans to resign on Monday.
Rad Schmid’s full resignation letter below:
