Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) is weighing in on if he suspects some members of Congress knew what would happen on January 6 and supported it.
The Republican lawmaker was asked about it in The New York Times interview. He said during the interview, “I won’t name names, but yes, I do have that suspicion.”
“I will say, if you just looked at Twitter — the whole reason I brought my gun and kept my staff home and told my wife to stay in the apartment was looking at Twitter. I saw the threats,” he added.
Kinzinger, however, did call Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) out by name.
“When Lauren Boebert — I will call her out by name — tweeted ‘Today is 1776,’ I don’t know what that meant other than this is the time for revolution. Maybe it was a dumb tweet that she didn’t mean. Fine. I’ll give her that credit for now,” he said. “But if you have members of Congress who were involved in nurturing an insurrection, heck yeah, we need to know.”
Kinzinger shared that he does not have policy discussions with Reps. Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
“Marjorie Taylor Greene, I give her credit for probably achieving what she intended to achieve, which is: I don’t care about the damage I’m doing; I want to be famous and raise money,” Kinzinger said. “Congratulations. That’s not a serious legislator.”
Additionally, the Illinois lawmaker said that former President Donald Trump is “like a gangrenous limb. But then that limb gets cut off, and now you don’t have a leg.”
He added:
“He’s a symptom of what probably was about a quarter of the party that was always kind of conspiracy-driven but was generally suppressed by most normal Republicans. But everybody has fear in their heart, and when somebody, especially somebody in authority, speaks to the darkest parts of your heart, your fears, your racism — it gives you permission to let those things overtake you. That’s what happened with a lot of the rest of the party.”
Kinzinger has spoken out about Trump’s election claims. He also has not been shy about his thoughts on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his leadership.
As some Democratic lawmakers began calling for Trump to be removed from office by invoking the 25th Amendment after the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, Kinzinger became the first Republican to support the idea. He also voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment on the charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
