The Harshest Punishment Paul Gosar Could Get for Jan. 6
Hunter Walker, author of the Rolling Stone piece that revealed Gosar promised pardons to rioters, came on the podcast to talk his big scoop and what could happen to Gosar.
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Paul Gosar has been basically caught red-handed.
According to bombshell reporting from Hunter Walker for Rolling Stone, the far-right Arizona congressman promised Jan. 6 rioters blanket “pardons.” Not only that, but according to Walker, he was so confident about those pardons he called them a “done deal.”
Walker tells The New Abnormal host Molly Jong-Fast all about it in Tuesday’s episode, including his secret weapon for getting such big scoops: chiefs of staff.
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“Oftentimes, they know more, they’re closer to what happened on any given story. And also, they are less schooled in the art of not saying things,” Walker says says.
Case in point: He saw Gosar’s chief of staff hanging out with a Jan. 6 rioter on the social platform Clubhouse. (Walker was also sent strongly worded emails from Lauren Boebert’s chief of staff, but we digress.)
So even though all of these things are coming to light about Jan. 6, what’s next? Molly asks. Well, a lot—but not much at all.
“They have a couple degrees of response. The first one is a reprimand, which is essentially a strongly worded letter that is theoretically a problem I guess if you’re in a competitive district and have a challenger. The next one is a censure, which is a stronger, strongly worded letter,” Walker explains.
At some point, getting booted from one’s position by the House is an option, but with Republican support, “the real cards will lie with the DOJ,” says Walker.
Plus! The reporter re-enacts actual emails he’s gotten from people on the Hill, and by people we mean GOP-ers like Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
Then, David Pepper, author of Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call from Behind the Lines, tells Molly how Republicans in state houses (like his home state of Ohio) are all slowly burning our democracy to the ground—and passing on the playbook to other states as they go. But not if we do this first.
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