Joshua Humphreys

January 8, 2021

After reflecting on the whipsaw of events this week, from the historic outcome of Georgia’s senatorial run-off elections to the insurrectionary occupation of the United States Capitol, I join those calling for the prosecution of President Trump for seditious conspiracy, along with the leaders of the riot who held American democracy hostage Wednesday. 

After losing every court case he brought charging voter fraud in the presidential election, the outgoing President continues to spread lies and misinformation about its results.  

After repeatedly emboldening racist White nationalists throughout his term of office, the President explicitly incited armed supporters to interfere in the democratic process of certifying the results of the Electoral College. Then he publicly praised this disgraceful hodge-podge of White supremacists, radical right extremists, Neo-Confederates, Libertarian losers, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and Proud Boys for violently storming the Capitol.

Inside the House chamber, a small minority of elected representatives encouraged the mob further by objecting frivolously — and unsuccessfully — to the electoral outcome in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, after failing repeatedly to marshal evidence of systemic voter fraud in any state in our union. Their fate, like Trump’s, will be in the hands of their constituents, although Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and the other leaders of this revolt within the House should also be investigated for seditious conspiracy. 

I look forward to a new dawn of American democracy with the next administration, but in order to move forward as a nation, President Trump must be held responsible for the damage he has done to American democracy during his brief, bitter reign. He has become a national disgrace who will go down in history as the Republic’s most divisive, disastrous, and deceitful president. 

But History’s judgment is not enough. Regardless of whether the President is impeached or removed from office here in the final days of his term, he should be prosecuted for sedition to the fullest extent of the law, with the maximum criminal sentence in federal prison time.

To the resilience of America’s ongoing democratic experiment,

Joshua Humphreys
President
Croatan Institute