Fitzpatrick Sponsors Trump Censure Over Capitol Riot, Election

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Bucks County Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has introduced a resolution censuring President Donald Trump for his roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election and encouraging last week's deadly rioting at the U.S. Capitol.

The censure would be a formal rebuke to Trump authored by his fellow Republicans, but stops short of impeachment, which the Democrat-controlled House was pursuing on Wednesday.

In a news release, Fitzpatrick, who voted Tuesday against a measure calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment which could remove Trump from office, argued that impeachment is almost certain to fail in the GOP-controlled Senate.

A censure, he said, is a rebuke that can be supported by a broader range of lawmakers.

Read The Censure Resolution Here

"President Trump’s attempts to undermine the outcome of the 2020 election have been unconscionable," Fitzpatrick said. "The combination of a false information campaign coupled with inflammatory rhetoric led to the devastation that I was a personal witness to on the House floor on Jan. 6. His actions threatened the integrity of our democracy, Congress and his own vice president.

"For months, President Trump has been lying to the American people with false information, and giving his supporters false expectations. The election is over."

Fitzpatrick said that forcing "a time-consuming and divisive trial in the Senate" over impeachment will be a distraction for President-elect Joe Biden and likely won't happen until he is already in office. That, he said, is why he supports a censure in both the House and the Senate that could be supported by Democrats and Republicans.

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"Our country must both hold the president accountable and provide closure and the opportunity to begin anew with the incoming administration," Fitzpatrick said. "A concurrent censure resolution with language nearly identical to the impeachment resolution introduced in the House is the only immediate, appropriate, and effective means for achieving this."

Fitzpatrick's resolution was co-sponsored by fellow Republican representatives Tom Reed of New York, Young Kim of California, Fred Upton of Michigan, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, John Curtis of Utah and Peter Meijer of Michigan.

It was unclear Wednesday morning whether the censure might be considered by the full House in addition to the impeachment resolution.