Dear Senator (Bennett/Hickenlooper),

Our democracy is at stake, and without consequences for those who have incited violence to attack us, we will not be able to engage in the healing as a nation that we so desperately need. I urge you to expel Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz from your body, and if you are unable to get the two-thirds vote required to get this done, I urge you to censure them and strip them of all committee assignments.

In October Term of 2007, I was one of thirty-seven law clerks chosen to clerk for the United States Supreme Court. Professional bonds between law clerk classes are typically quite strong; we are often asked to sign letters of support when one of us is nominated to the federal bench or other office.

My ethical standards require me to do the opposite: to indicate when one of our number has passed the bounds of decency. I clerked during the same term as Josh Hawley. At the time, he appeared to me to be a decent person, but decent people do not incite violent insurrection. I have not worked with Ted Cruz, but I have spoken to people who have, who also claim that he is a decent person. Decent people do not incite violent insurrection.

Hawley and Cruz’s contest of the votes to the electoral college lent credence to the lie that there were significant election irregularities and fraud, that the vote had been “stolen.” Without citing any evidence of actual fraud, they both stated that others believed it had happened—something that is true, but only because people like Hawley and Cruz have continually claimed that it did.

They have both claimed that this was a chance for evidence to be heard; as former law clerks to Chief Justices, the two of them must know that multiple state courts have heard evidence of election irregularities, and while some of those lawsuits have been dismissed on technical grounds (such as standing doctrine), others have heard the evidence and have found it not credible.

But these are not two people who merely misunderstood the news as it was presented by a biased media source. These are the very people who should have been using their legal training to correct the biases of those sources.

Instead, they knowingly, falsely roused antipathy to the idea of a peaceful transfer of power. They were also undoubtedly aware that Donald Trump’s increasingly dangerous rhetoric, and I suspect are students of history enough to guess at what the consequences would be.

These are not people who deserve to sit in the Senate, let alone to sit on the Senate judiciary committee. They have forsaken their oaths to uphold the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

If we do not have consequences, we will not have a Republic.

Thank you.



Heidi S. Bond