Opinion: Give Wendy Rogers due process. But presuming the facts hold up, the Arizona Senate has little choice but to remove her from office. Yes, even this close to an election.
Editorial boardArizona Republic
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, appears to have crossed a bright red line into misconduct. The Senate must defend itself and the institution from that kind of behavior.
It’s an unseemly duty for the Arizona Senate to investigate Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, with the possible consequence of expelling her from office.
Such tasks should be approached with great deference to voters who chose her as their representative. We are nearing state elections that would make it the easiest of things to leave it to their verdict in the fall.
But Rogers is accused of disgracing the Senate and the state of Arizona with behavior that appears to have crossed a bright red line into misconduct.
Only hours after a white gunman fired upon mostly Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo N.Y., killing 10 and wounding three, Rogers posted on the social media site Telegram, “Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo.”
Rogers implied the feds killed those people
The message seemed pretty clear: Rogers was accusing the federal government of running a false flag operation in Buffalo. Whether she meant it or not, her words implied that federal law officers had either falsely staged the event or killed those people in the grocery store.
