Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) is being pushed aside by not just some of his colleagues, but also his family.
Kinzinger became the first Republican Congressmember to publicly support removing former President Donald Trump following protesters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Following his call for Trump’s removal, the Illinois lawmaker received a handwritten two-page letter from 11 family members suggesting he was working with “the devil’s army” for breaking with the then-president, according to The New York Times.
The family members wrote, “Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!”
The letter also read:
“It is now most embarrassing to us that we are related to you. You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”
Kinzinger’s cousin, Karen Otto, who wrote the letter told the Times, “I wanted Adam to be shunned.” Kinzinger saw the letter, according to the Times, after Otto mailed it to Kinzinger’s father. Otto also sent copies of the letter to Republicans across Illinois.
Check out the letter below:
Read the two-page, hand-written letter Kinzinger’s cousins sent him Jan. 8.
It begins: “Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” https://t.co/EWD2YZO49X pic.twitter.com/RcgmRmYKjc
— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) February 15, 2021
During the House impeachment trial, Kinzinger was one of the few House Republicans to vote for impeaching Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
The Senate acquitted Trump on Saturday — seven Republicans joined Democrats but it fell short of the 67 votes needed to convict the former president.
Kinzinger said in a statement following Trump’s acquittal:
“To those who have argued that impeachment was rushed or that impeachment will further divide us, we must remember that former President Trump put all of us—Congress and the American people—in this lose-lose situation.”
“Make no mistake, the damage being done to the state of our republic and the democratic values we hold dear is unacceptable. And the losses I’ll face pale in comparison to the stakes here,” he added.
Kinzinger continued, “I am disappointed that the Senate was unwilling to hold former President Trump accountable for his actions. And I will be looking at alternate options to ensure responsibility and accountability so that what happened on January 6, 2021 will never happen again.”
The La Salle County Republican Central Committee voted to censure Kinzinger over his vote to impeach Trump, as IJR reported.
