On January 6, shortly before the riot at the United States Capitol, Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas) objected to certifying then-President-Elect Joe Biden‘s 2020 victory over former President Donald Trump in the Electoral College.
Democrats filed complaints against the two men with the Senate Ethics Committee. Cruz and Hawley “failed to [p]ut loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department,” Democrats alleged.
But Politico questioned on Monday just how much progress has been made, given the lack of news or updates on the matter.
“The comments from Hawley and Cruz underscore the glacial speed of the Senate panel charged with policing its members. Even less public than its notoriously under-wraps House counterpart and no match at all for House Democrats’ quick censure of [Rep. Paul] Gosar (R-Arizona), the Senate ethics committee appears to have done little in the 10 months since the Democrats first launched their complaint into Hawley and Cruz’s objections to the election, which preceded the pro-Trump riot that led to multiple deaths and injured scores of police officers,” noted Politico.
Cruz and Hawley have said that neither of them has been contacted by Senate investigators.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who filed the initial complaint, said that if aspects of it could be dismissed, investigators would have done so already.
“If there’s no merit to it, they dump it and let everyone know. That hasn’t happened, and we would know that. Presumably we are through that,” Whitehouse said “As far as I know, it is still ongoing. None of the public signals that it’s not ongoing have been sent.”
In other words, no news is probably good news.
