Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security, thinks that Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) should be punished after rioters pillaged the halls of the United States Capitol last week.
Hawley and Cruz questioned the certification the 2020 election results for Joe Biden and have been blamed, in part, for the riot at the Capitol which resulted in the death of five people, including a Capitol police officer.
There are now calls for the senators to be disbarred and their Democratic peers have even asked for the two to step down for their perceived role in the riot. Thompson is taking it one step further, saying that Cruz and Hawley should also be placed on the no-fly list.
“There’s no exemption for being put on the no-fly list,” Thompson said during a Serious XM interview on Monday. “Even a member of Congress that commits a crime, you know, they expel from the body.”
“There are ethics charges that can be brought against those individuals,” he continued. “And people are looking at all this. What Hawley did and what Cruz did was horrible.”
Bennie Thompson represents Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District (MS-2) which covers much of Western Mississippi. It includes most of Jackson, the riverfront cities of Greenville and Vicksburg and the interior market cities of Clarksdale, Greenwood and Clinton.
Thompson had previously those involved in the riot at the U.S. Capitol to be labeled domestic terrorists and to also be added to the no-fly list.
When faced with criticism from one Twitter user who said that Thompson “should be ashamed” for saying that Cruz and Hawley should be on the no-fly list, Thompson responded, “I am not ashamed. However, they should be.”
I am not ashamed. However, they should be. https://t.co/yvqkgfzcpy
— Bennie G. Thompson (@BennieGThompson) January 11, 2021
Thompson also revealed in the interview that the Congressional Black Caucus will hold a hearing Wednesday to begin a CBC investigation into what took place at the Capitol which will be independent of the other committee investigations.
He said they are doing this because, “We believe that that double standard existed on the 6th of January. We want to know why so that- obviously we do know why.“
“But somebody’s gonna have to tell us why is occurred other than the fact that there were White people involved and you treat White protesters with kid gloves and Black and White protesters with… You throw the full face and power of the government on them to suppress them. It oughta be one policy.”
