OVER A DOZEN LAWMAKERS IN CROWDS ON DAY OF RIOT
W.Va. official says on radio show he hopes Trump ‘calls us back’
A second Republican lawmaker from West Virginia who marched to the U.S. Capitol to support overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win said in a radio interview Monday that he hopes President Donald Trump “calls us back.”
State Sen. Mike Azinger said that the crowds loyal to Trump were “inspiring and patriotic.”
“I think the president laid out the point of the mission,” he added, speaking to West Virginia Metro News. “It was to pressure the Republican congressmen to challenge the electoral votes.”
Azinger was among more than a dozen lawmakers from at least nine states that joined crowds that descended on Washington last Wednesday to back the baseless claim that the election was stolen. Only one lawmaker was known to have gotten inside the Capitol and since was charged with a crime and resigned. Others have said they participated peacefully.
In northern Virginia, two Loudoun County officials called Monday for Republican state Del. Dave LaRock to resign for joining the crowds last Wednesday in Washington.
He and two other Virginia Republican lawmakers had sent a letter last Tuesday to Vice President Mike Pence asking him to nullify the presidential election results in Virginia, a state Biden won by 10 percentage points.
Elsewhere, incoming Republican Colorado state Rep. Ron Hanks told a local radio station last week that he arrived for Trump’s rally at the Ellipse outside the White House early that Wednesday morning of the violence. The president used the occasion to urge supporters to “fight like hell.”
Hanks said he marched with supporters to the U.S. Capitol afterward. “I was a little surprised to see people already on the scaffolding, with the Trump f lag, and so forth,” he told Heart of the Rockies Radio.
West Virginia state Del. Derrick Evans resigned Saturday, a day after federal prosecutors charged him with illegally entering the U.S. Capitol. He had livestreamed himself with a mob of Trump supporters. His resignation letter said he took full responsibility for his actions.
If convicted, he faces up to a year and a half in prison for two misdemeanor charges of entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct.