Photos circulating on social media show Kern in the crowd standing in front of the Capitol, though no pictures have emerged of him inside the building./Twitter
By Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
Legislative Democrats are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate four Arizona Republican officeholders for their possible involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Related: Biggs casts blame for riot on leftist groups
All but one of the 43 Democrats serving in the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate co-signed the letter to Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking a federal probe into Congressmen Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, state Rep. Mark Finchem and former state Rep. Anthony Kern. Finchem and Kern were part of the demonstration whose participants later forced their way into the Capitol, while an organizer of the rally has claimed that Biggs and Gosar helped him plan the event.
“They did all of this in public. What they did outside of plain view we do not yet know. But there is evidence to indicate that Arizona Representatives Mark Finchem, Anthony Kern, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs encouraged, facilitated, participated and possibly helped plan this anti-democratic insurrection on January 6,” the letter read. “It is vital to any current or future federal investigations, and ultimately to the Arizona public they represent, that we learn what these elected officials knew about this planned insurrection and when they knew it.”
The Democratic lawmakers suggested that the four Republicans could be found criminally liable. They also argued that they might be ineligible for public office under a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring people who have participated in rebellion or insurrection against the United States.
