Rep. Debbie Lesko's moment under the insurrectionist spotlight

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol added another picture to the rogues’ gallery of congressional insurrectionists from Arizona this week:

Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko.

We knew it was coming.

Just as we already knew a lot about Lesko’s participation in perpetuating the Big Lie.

She joined with Arizona Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar in trying and reject Arizona’s electoral college votes.

She joined with Biggs, Gosar, and Rep. David Schweikert in an attempt to set aside the election results in Pennsylvania.

Trump supporters will "go nuts"

She was among the 100 Republicans who teamed up with the attorney general of Texas to try to throw out the election results of four states, a lawsuit dismissed in a nanosecond by the Supreme Court.

Lesko boldly spread the notion of election fraud with no proof, just like Trump.

The night before the Jan. 6 insurrection, however, the boldness disappeared and Lesko morphed into a simple scaredy cat.

The committee played a tape of Lesko meeting with other Republican members of Congress and saying, “I also asked leadership to come up with a safety plan for members. I’m actually very concerned about this because we have who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have Antifa we also have quite honestly Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election and when that doesn’t happen most likely will not happen they are going to go nuts.”

(This comes at the 3-minute mark in the video.)

And for the record, there was no evidence of any Antifa participation in the attack. It was Trump supporters who, in Lesko’s words, went nuts.

Her comments about safety for members of Congress had been made public earlier.

Lesko tried to divert attention from her own words by saying stuff like, “The number one question the Committee should be seeking to answer is why was the U.S. Capitol not secure? Instead, the Committee will broadcast the Democrats’ latest exercise in political theater.”

An attempt at misdirection was required because Lesko’s own words are damning. To herself. To her colleagues.

Lesko is concerned about is “a safety plan for members.”

She’s worried that a mob is “going to go nuts”.

Safety concerns, for themselves

But, how is that a surprise?

Lesko and the other spreaders of the Big Lie, from Trump down, supplied the mob with the metaphorical dynamite. They provided the blasting caps. And the fuses. And the detonators.

And then they wanted protection from the explosion.

For themselves.

What about all those misguided and conned members of the mob who stormed the Capitol? Would it not have been nice if a delegation of Republican politicians held a press conference the night before Jan. 6 and told them the election results would not change? That they had no evidence of fraud. That there was no reason to “go nuts.”

But they didn’t. Because they were thinking about themselves.

Which explains the legal consequences of that awful, tragic, deadly attack on the Capitol.

Nearly 900 individuals have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection.

Not one of them is a member of Congress.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rep. Debbie Lesko's moment under the insurrectionist spotlight