Green threatened with lynching after impeachment call
Congressman says he won’t end effort to remove Trump from office
Congressman Al Green was threatened with lynching after he demanded the impeachment of President Donald Trump on the House floor last week.
“You ain’t going to impeach nobody. Try it and we will lynch all of you,” a caller said in one of several threatening recordings the Houston Democrat played at a town hall meeting Saturday.
“You’ll be hanging from a tree,” the caller continued.
The calls use graphic racial slurs, some calling Green the n-word. “You are so disgusting,” one caller said. “You’re scum. You’re pathetic.”
Green was the first member of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment from the House floor Wednesday. The congressman said the firing of FBI Director James Comey was one of the reasons. Although some Democrats are alarmed about the firing, Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, would have to participate in impeachment proceedings.
“The president fired the FBI director who was investigating him and said he did it because of the investigation,” Green said. “That’s pretty serious. That’s obstruction of justice. We believe no person is above the law, not even the president of the United
States of America.”
The meeting at Fountain Life Center in southwest Houston was high security, filled with police officers milling around the building. Security officials holding wands checked the roughly 100 participants entering into the meeting.
“We are not going to be intimidated,” Green said of the threats. “We are not going to allow this to cause us to deviate from what we believe to be the right thing to do and that is to proceed with the impeachment of President Trump.” Focus on process
Green, who is serving his seventh term representing Texas’ 9th congressional district, has received threatening messages at his offices in Houston and Washington, spokeswoman Camille Scott said. They played recordings of the calls at the meeting believed to be the most graphic.
He said he wanted his constituents to be aware of the hateful calls, but the town hall’s main focus remained on steps to impeach Trump.
“You cannot allow hate to be hidden,” Green said. “You have to expose hate. Hate is a means by which people can be harmed. It’s an evil. The best way to deal with evil is to expose.”
Some constituents asked Green how they could move the process along and get the word out to others. He urged community members to continue to call their local politicians and to attend town hall meetings.
“I’m expecting the people to stand up and make their voices heard, so that we in Congress will know what their desires are,” he said. “When the people express their will, I think it will impact the will of the Congress.” ‘We stand with you’
Robin Paoli, lead organizer of the Houston Women’s March in January, condemned the threats against Green.
“We stand with you,” Paoli said. “We stand with your honorable action of holding the president accountable. I as a white woman stand by my brother and say we will not tolerate those kind of death threats and racial slurs that are being thrown at you.”