Senate Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) following the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Seven Democrats, in a letter, urged the Senate Ethics Committee to “investigate their conduct to fully understand their role” and added that “the actions of which we know demand an investigation and a determination whether disciplinary action is warranted.”
“Until then, a cloud of uncertainty will hang over them and over this body,” the senators wrote.
Their views, however, are not shared by all Democrats in the upper chamber. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the longest-serving Democratic members, defended Cruz and Hawley for lodging objections during the Electoral College read-out.
“I think the Senate is a place of freedom,” Feinstein told reporters at the Capitol this week, saying it was part of a dialogue. “And people come here to speak their piece, and they do, and they provide a kind of leadership. In some cases, it’s positive, in some cases, maybe not. A lot of that depends on who’s looking and what party they are. But it’s an important place to have this kind of dialogue. It’s probably the highest-level dialogue that you get in an electoral body.”
They want the Ethics Committee to determine whether the two senators’ actions failed to “[p]ut loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department” or if they engaged in “improper conduct reflecting on the Senate.”
Both Hawley and Cruz denounced the riots at the Capitol but said they had the right to challenge the electoral results in Pennsylvania and Arizona. The two had planned to challenge the results during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6.
Cruz, meanwhile, responded to footage of Capitol breachers who appeared to go through his paperwork on the Senate floor on Jan. 6.
One of the individuals in the video is heard saying that “Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we’re good.”
But Cruz appeared to disagree.
“I think it was a terrorist attack on the Capitol, and it was despicable, and anyone who committed acts of violence should be fully prosecuted and should go jail for a long time,” Cruz told the Washington Examiner this week.
The Epoch Times reached out to Cruz’s and Hawley’s offices for comment.
