3 siblings want Gosar expelled after siege
Three of Rep. Paul Gosar’s siblings have reached out to Rep. Raúl Grijalva asking him to help get their brother expelled from Congress after the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol they blame him for helping to instigate.
It is the third time in three years members of the Arizona Republican’s family have taken dramatic steps hoping to derail his political career.
Once again, it comes in response to what they view as outrageous conduct that hurts the nation.
In 2018, his family members gained national attention for appearing in ads for Gosar’s failed Democratic opponent, David Brill. Last year, they again endorsed his Democratic challenger, Delina DiSanto. Now, some of them want to see consequences for his supporting the mob that stormed the Capitol in a siege that left five people dead, including a police officer.
“We know him to be an extremist and we took that very seriously,” said Seattle resident Jennifer Gosar, one of Paul Gosar’s nine siblings. “I believe that my brother has been a constant perpetrator of misinformation.”
“He’s set a dangerous sort of precedent along the 10 years he’s been in office,” said Tim Gosar of Fort Collins, Colo. “When you talk about what happened the other day, you’re talking about treason. You’re talking about overthrowing the government. That’s what this is. If that doesn’t rise to the level of expulsion, what does?”
Wyoming resident David Gosar said his brother “has parroted the exact same lies that Trump has” about the election.
“Five people are dead and Congress has been attacked,” David Gosar said. “Somebody has to pay a penalty for it.”
Paul Gosar’s chief of staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Grijalva’s office acknowledged hearing from the Gosars. Grijalva said he is most focused on Trump’s accountability but wants others to answer for the riots as well.
“I am first and foremost focused on removing the President from office as soon as possible,” Grijalva said in a statement. “But we must not overlook the role that some Members of Congress played in promoting the baseless conspiracy theories that led to Wednes
day’s siege of the Capitol. It’s no secret that some threw gasoline on an alreadyraging fire.
“If a Member of Congress willingly violated their oath of office and tacitly encouraged a mob to overturn the results of democratic elections, their actions should be investigated and they should face consequences. If that includes expulsion, so be it.”
Grijalva has signed onto a pair of efforts in the House seeking consequences for trying to overturn the election.
One, filed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., before the attack on the Capitol, would censure Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, for telling people “you’ve got to go to the streets” after a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results was dismissed.
Gohmert has maintained he did not intend for people to be violent.
The other, filed Wednesday by Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., would seek to expel members of Congress who “incited this domestic terrorist attack through their attempts to overturn the election.”
Congress has only expelled 20 members in its history, including two House members in the past 40 years.
In 1980, the House voted to expel then-Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, DPa., for his involvement in the “Abscam” bribery scandal that resulted in the conviction of six House members and one senator. Myers was indicted last year on federal charges of election fraud in Pennsylvania in 2014, 2015 and 2016 primary elections, bribery of an election official and voting more than once in federal elections.
In 2002, the House expelled thenRep. Jim Traficant, D-Ohio, after his conviction for racketeering and bribery.
The extraordinary request from some of Gosar’s family members is only one of the controversies to mark the oftencaustic six-term congressman’s tenure.
His Prescott-based district spans northwestern Arizona and wraps around the outskirts of the Valley. It is Arizona’s most conservative district, and it is where Gosar has thrived politically.
‘Stop the Steal’
His latest controversy grows out of his zeal to “Stop the Steal,” an effort rooted in the baseless claims that the presidential election was stolen from Trump.
Gosar has tweeted dozens of times in support of rallies in Arizona and Washington and other attempts to make the case that Trump didn’t lose. Gosar led the challenge to certifying Arizona’s presidential election results in Congress on Wednesday.
Ali Alexander, the man who helped organize the gathering in Washington on Wednesday credited Gosar, along with Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Mo Brooks, R-Ala., for helping make it happen.
That event is now viewed in a different light after the pro-Trump mob broke into the Capitol and trashed congressional offices. Five people died in the melee.
Alexander described the event this way before it happened:
“We four schemed up of putting max pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
To some of his nine siblings, Gosar’s heated rhetoric helped push people to the event in a fighting mood.
Controversies mushroomed
Gosar, a retired dentist, rode to Washington on the anti-Obamacare wave election of 2010, when he ousted Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., mainly over her support for the Affordable Care Act.
His national introduction to most may have come in 2015, when the selfdescribed “proud Catholic” was the only member of Congress not to attend Pope Francis’ historic address to lawmakers.
Gosar said he skipped it because the pontiff discussed climate change, which Gosar dismissed as a “fool’s errand.” In 2019, Gosar wrote to the Vatican attacking the pope again.
“I want bible based theology from the Pope not trendy socialist tripe,” he wrote in a characteristically blunt tweet.
Many others took note of Gosar in October 2017, when he suggested in an interview with “Vice News” for Home Box Office that the deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was planned by “an Obama sympathizer” and that liberal activist George Soros may have been a Nazi collaborator as a youth.
That was the incident that led most of his siblings to campaign for Gosar’s opponent.
He once called for the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants who were attending the State of the Union speech at the invitation of Democratic members of Congress, including members from Arizona.
In an interview with Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim activist who has peddled his own widely discredited conspiracies, Gosar said he opposes any special legal protection for DACA recipients. DACA has allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented “Dreamers” to temporarily live and work in the U.S without the threat of deportation.
“Providing any lawful or legal status to DACA recipients that allows them to stay in the country and work is the definition of amnesty,” he has said.
Gosar, who has complained about tech companies censoring conservatives, blocked at least some of his more liberal critics from his Facebook page. He relented after it led to litigation.
He drew national ridicule in 2018 for suggesting during a congressional hearing that his training as a dentist made him an expert on body language.
“By the way, I’m a dentist, OK? So I read body language very, very well. And I watched you comment in actions with (then-Rep. Trey) Gowdy (R-S.C.). You got very angry in regards to the Gold Star father,” Gosar said. “That shows me that it’s innately a part of you and a bias.”
After that, he delivered a lecture on the government that seemed to fizzle mid-thought.
“We are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic,” he said. “That is why we have, um, two ways, both from a democracy, voting, and then from, the, uh, where we have the, uh, Electoral College. So make sure that we
get that straight.”
Days later, Gosar took to a London stage to urge the release of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known there as Tommy Robinson, who has decried “Muslim invaders” in his country.
Robinson went to jail for defying court-ordered secrecy. He was permanently banned from Twitter for violating rules governing “hateful conduct.” Robinson also reportedly has prior convictions for violence, drug possession, mortgage fraud and traveling to the United States on someone else’s passport.
Gosar’s support for someone with a past like Robinson’s isn’t surprising. Gosar has followed multiple Twitter accounts that published messages that are racist or pushed white nationalism, as TPM, a liberal website, detailed.
In 2019, “Saturday Night Live” spoofed Gosar’s performance during a hearing with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Gosar used the schoolyard taunt “liar, liar, pants on fire” and stumbled through his turn of questions, which SNL mocked.
In Congress, Gosar has chaired the Western Caucus, a group with close ties to the energy industry. His activities with that group have helped make Gosar one of the most prolific travelers in Congress.
Political geography matters
One reason for Gosar’s hard-right turn is almost certainly political.
In November, Arizona voters reelected all nine of its House incumbents. Gosar won with 70% of the vote and the second-widest margin in the state.
After years of unflattering coverage and occasional ridicule, that may have surprised casual political observers. But it shouldn’t have.
The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission that drew the districts in 2011 created what were intended to be three competitive House districts out of the state’s nine total seats. It gave Arizona a relatively high share of competition compared to many states where tough races are hard to find.
But it came at a price.
In a state with high concentrations of Latino residents who usually vote for Democrats and where the biggest single group of voters are Republicans, creating competitive seats meant packing Republicans into a few districts, especially Gosar’s.
Before he ran in his current district,
Gosar spent two years representing the 1st Congressional District that covers northeastern Arizona, including Flagstaff, where he lives. Then and now, that district was usually competitive.
In 2011, Gosar voted to raise the federal debt ceiling. While it was once a budgeting formality, it became a source of high-stakes negotiations for Republicans to extract budget concessions from then-President Barack Obama to avert defaulting on the nation’s debt.
Though he took heat from conservatives, Gosar defended his move as the responsible thing to do at the time and voted against similar moves other times. After running and winning in the 4th Congressional District, Gosar was able to cater to his more-conservative constituents’ liking.
Gosar’s health, future questioned
Even Republicans have quietly voiced concerns about Gosar’s health. Some have speculated for months that he will not serve out the two-year term he began just this week. Others expect he won’t seek another, especially after all the state’s congressional boundaries are redrawn this year.
Gosar, who played contact sports as a youth and has maintained a rigorous, cross-country travel schedule throughout his congressional tenure, had visible spasms in his hands at least as early in 2015 that were due to what he described as compressed vertebrae in his neck and lower back. In the years since, he has exhibited exaggerated head movements as well.
In October, Gosar told The Arizona Republic he didn’t have any neural disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.
“None whatsoever,” he said. “I’ve had two back surgeries. I’ve had hip surgery. They want to do another hip surgery.”
Jennifer Gosar, a Spanish-language translator, said she has noticed her brother’s physical condition deteriorate.
Still, she has given up on trying to form a more normal relationship with him.
“I do not wish to have a personal connection to him,” Jennifer Gosar said. “I don’t associate with Proud Boy members. I don’t associate with Patriot Prayer supporters. I don’t want to support anybody that is an active member of hate in our society — and that includes Paul.”