To the Editor:

Editor’s Note: This letter was addressed to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

I am dismayed that you describe the January 6 Select Committee hearings as ‘political circus” (Fox 16 June 2022). Your lack of respect for your colleagues and work they are doing to protect our Constitution is flabbergasting.

The Committee and the witnesses called before it make it clear that Donald Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law continues to be abetted by those who, like you, continued to claim with no evidence that the 2020 Presidential Election was riddled with fraud.

You condemn “the tragic events” of January 6:

“First and foremost, I fully condemn the tragic events that occurred at the United States Capitol. Americans have a Constitutional right to protest and freedom of speech, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and anti-American. The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law (Letter to me 23 April 2021 responding to my letter 7 January 2021).

Your continued insistence on election fraud squarely and definitely implicates you in the moral responsibility for the January 6 insurrection which took the lives of police officers, for the escalating threats to public officials - including your colleagues - and the anguish suffered by such citizens as Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman. In addition, your characterization of the January 6 hearings - the purpose of which is to determine the facts of the insurrection - as “political circus” belie your claim that the perpetrators must be prosecuted.

Given your deliberate blindness to the evidence, this throws into question your ability to do the work you were elected to do in Congress. What other evidence do you cynically ignore when decision-making in the House? And who benefits?

Your commitment to the voters of the 21st District is also questionable when you voted by proxy in the House on 14 January 2022 “due to the ongoing public health emergency” but actually participated in a campaign fundraiser at Mar-a Largo where you and most of the participants did not wear masks. Proxy voting “was not adopted with the intention of allowing a member … to attend a political fundraiser,” according to Molly Reynolds, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution (NCPR website 14 January 2022). I would be very interested in finding out your definition of a lie.

Not all of us in the 21st District are blind to the falsehoods you parrot.We deserve to be represented by someone whose political ambitions are not the priority. We deserve a representative who is fully committed to the oath to the U.S. Constitution, to the rule of law, and ultimately, to the truth.

Judith E. Funston
Norwood