Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) recently introduced a proposal to censure Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the past chairman of the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot and surrounding events. Gaetz got just a single cosponsor, which doesn’t make it seem like this effort is going anywhere.
Censure doesn’t necessarily amount to much, although in theory, it might matter more if the House was actually more adherent to basic standards of human decency. (Thanks but no thanks for veering so wildly off course, House GOP.) Censure is essentially just a formal rebuke, though Gaetz’s resolution targeting Thompson also includes the Mississippi Democrat’s forced removal from the House Homeland Security Committee. The single cosponsor is Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), whose other recent hits include animosity towards Kevin McCarthy for the deal he finally struck with the White House to raise the nation’s debt limit so the federal government could accommodate expenses to which it was already committed.
The text of Gaetz’s resolution ties his attempt to secure Thompson’s censure to allegations that he mishandled records from the House January 6 committee’s work. According to the version of events in the Florida Congressman’s proposal, Thompson didn’t comprehensively provide his panel’s records to an internal House authority, though transmissions of information were made to others in government, like the Department of Homeland Security. It seems obvious, though, that Gaetz’s resolution would also be imagined as payback for the riot investigation, at the close of which committee members recommended that Donald Trump be criminally charged in connection to his attempted meddling with the 2020 presidential election’s result.
