As the Phil Anschutz-owned Washington Examiner reported yesterday afternoon:
The House Ethics Committee must launch a preliminary investigation into House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters after a House GOP lawmaker filed a complaint with the panel.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican and a freshman, on Tuesday released a copy of her complaint against Waters that charged her with violating House ethics rules following comments the California Democrat made to protesters in the streets of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, near Minneapolis.
“I write to request that the House Committee on Ethics open an investigation into Representative Maxine Waters for her incitement of the violent riots in Brooklyn Center, her unethical use of her office to unconstitutionally pressure an independent judiciary, and her pattern of similar behavior that is unbecoming of a Member of Congress and discredits the House of Representatives,” Boebert wrote to the bipartisan panel of 10 House lawmakers.
The panel will have to review Boebert’s complaint, but it may not result in an investigation.
First, the context the Examiner unsurprisingly omitted: Rep. Lauren Boebert is facing an ethics inquiry of her own for her role in inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Boebert’s huge volume of social media posts second-guessing the results of the 2020 presidential elections and calling for supporters to converge on Washington, D.C. that day–not to mention Boebert’s Tweets about the location of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after rioters had breached the Capitol–invite exactly the same allegations that Boebert is making against Rep. Maxine Waters.
With the maximum guilty verdict delivered in the George Floyd murder trial yesterday, the unrest that was feared in the event of a lesser verdict or acquittal did not materialize. The verdict in that case substantially vindicates the last year of protest over race relations in America, and validates the anger expressed by Black leaders like Rep. Waters. When you compare the very real struggle for racial justice in America with the violence Boebert encouraged in response to Donald Trump losing the 2020 elections, the extreme moral disparity between the two makes the comparison nothing short of outrageously offensive.
And yet here we are. Boebert’s whole strategy for answering for her own misdeeds is apparently to take what she is accused of, cross her name off the allegation, and put in Maxine Waters’ name as if there is even a tiny shred of moral equivalence between the two. Yesterday’s verdict just underscores the folly of this.
It’s not just shameless. It’s too shameless. It challenges even 2021’s outrage fatigue.
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The plan I think is to be so hypocritical that hypocrisy itself ceases to matter.
Boebert actually has a point here, albeit a small one. According to Yahoo! News earlier today, Chauvin’s attorney asked for a mistrial based on Waters’ comments. The judge refused, but specifically said that Waters’ comments could be grounds for an appeal. The judge further stated something about elected officials staying away from judicial proceedings.
I for one would hate to see Chauvin’s guilty verdicts overturned on appeal because Waters couldn’t keep her mouth shut. It’s a matter of thinking strategically.
A small point, indeed.
Motions for mistrial are a frequent follow-up to a guilty verdict. Many are made, few are granted. "Now that fired police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all three counts against him, he can still file an appeal. But the odds are not good, considering some 90% of appeals are denied across the United States."
Even if a motion were granted, most would result NOT in an acquittal, but a new trial with corrections to the procedure or personnel found defective.
Rep. Waters has a First Amendment right to make the comments she made. There's zero chance that her comments will result in reversible error in the court's denial of a mistrial. And the defense surely knows that, but moved for a mistrial to preserve the issue for appeal. The notion that her comments interfered with the independence of the judiciary in this case is laughable.
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This seems correct.