Will Arizona's insurrection enablers, Reps. Biggs and Gosar, pay a price?

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection will learn soon if it can subpoena Republican lawmakers who may have information about the attack on the Capitol.

Right at the top of that list, hopefully, will be Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs.

From the moment former President Donald Trump lost the election, Gosar and Biggs were among the elected officials who ditched their sworn oath to the Constitution in order to spread unfounded claims of election fraud and wild conspiracy theories, and to agitate, inflame and provoke gullible members of the public who so desperately wanted to believe that Trump could not lose.

An organizer of the Jan. 6 events, Ali Alexander, told the committee that he spoke to Biggs in person and had phone conversations with Gosar. (Biggs has denied this. Gosar has avoided the subject.)

Each of them should have jumped at the chance to address a committee whose job it is to determine what happened on that dark day and to propose measures that could make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Their siblings call out Biggs and Gosar

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, said in a TV interview, “I would hope that those individuals who took an oath of office as a member of the Congress would come forward. That’s why we have asked them to come voluntarily, and we think coming voluntarily should do it.”

And if they don’t?

“I think there's some questions of whether we have the authority to do it (issue subpoenas). We’re looking at it,” Thompson said. “If authorities are there, there’ll be no reluctance on our part.”

The Arizona Republic has done articles in which two of Biggs’ brothers say he is partly responsible for the Jan. 6 violence and Gosar’s siblings would like to see him expelled from Congress for being among those whom they believe helped to instigate the riot.

And there is that now infamous video made by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander in which he says, “I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and then Congressman Andy Biggs. 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.”

With the Constitution or with Trump?

What has happened, sadly, is that some of our politicians have traded in any notion of right and wrong, any sense of what it means to swear an oath, in exchange for undying fealty to Trump.

And in fear of his supporters.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the committee, said of Trump, “He could have told them (the rioters) to stand down. He could have told them to go home – and he failed to do so. It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that … . Any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office.”

And she said of Republicans, “We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both.”

Sadly, those of us in Arizona know where Biggs and Gosar stand.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Will Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar pay a price for the insurrection?