By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of progressive Democrats inspired by the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016 is going after a far right Trump supporting candidate for governor of Maryland, Dan Cox, who is now a Republican member of the state House of Delegates and has filed articles of impeachment against lame duck Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

Arguing that he should not be allowed on the ballot because of his support for and involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, Our Revolution is planning a gathering at the Office of the Maryland Board of Elections in Annapolis on Tuesday, Feb. 15, to demand an investigation into the actions of Cox in the days leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Back on Jan. 7, 2021, the non-profit local news outlet Maryland Matters and other local news organizations reported that Cox, a “fervent” supporter of then-President Trump, arranged for three tour buses to take constituents to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington.

Cox attended the rally on the National Mall by the White House and tweeted about the Vice President during the occupation of the Capitol: “Pence is a traitor.”

“Our Constitution disqualifies elected officials who engage in insurrection or provide aid and comfort to America’s enemies from holding office in the future,” Hal Ginsberg, Our Revolution national coordinator, said in an email blast to supporters.

There is a legal basis for this.

We have written about this before, and a recent op-ed in The New York Times pointed out that a charge of insurrection could be the legal vehicle for preventing Trump and others involved in the attack on the Capitol from ever running for office again.

“Only convicting them for participating in an insurrection would permanently disqualify them from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” wrote a bipartisan group of lawyers, including Laurence H. Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School who Attorney General Merrick Garland studied under, along with Donald Ayer, a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, and Dennis Aftergut, a former assistant U.S. attorney.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1868 after the American Civil War to grant citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and enslaved people who had been emancipated by President Abraham Lincoln, and to prevent Confederate rebel traitors from holding public office in the U.S.

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof….”

Dan Cox of Maryland is out there with Georgia’s Margerie Taylor Green and Florida’s Matt Gaetz trying to see who can out Trump Trump. By flying the Confederate battle flag and attacking the Capitol in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, these insurrectionists would seem to qualify as engaging in insurrection and rebellion.

Even Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came out this week and said: “We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”

Our Revolution will urge Maryland’s Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone to conduct an investigation to determine whether Cox is eligible to serve as governor of Maryland.

Cox filed his resolution calling for the impeachment of Hogan this week.

“Without malice, I have had to do my duty under the Maryland Constitution,” Cox said. “I have filed Articles of Impeachment against Governor Larry Hogan.”

Cox’s attempt is a long shot to get out of the House Rules Committee, according to the Maryland Daily Record.

Cox accuses Hogan of “malfeasance in office, misuse of police power, violations of separation of powers, theft of the people’s liberty and property, deprivation of religious liberties of the people and abuse of power under false pretenses.”

All of the complaints relate to Hogan’s actions during the coronavirus pandemic, including the purchase of COVID-19 test kits from South Korea in 2020. Cox charged that Hogan violated the law by using tests that were not approved by the federal government.

Included in the charges are Hogan’s orders closing non-essential businesses early in the pandemic as well as capacity limits that affected businesses and churches. Cox also charges that Hogan overstepped his authority when the state health department limited the use of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, drugs advocated by Trump and other conspiracy advocates as cures and preventative treatments for Covid, with no scientific basis.

Cox also charges Hogan violated his oath of office by refusing to release communications with his coronavirus advisors and used the encrypted application Wickr. The app allowed Hogan and his team to ensure the messages were deleted once read.

The messages “may have also included his unlawful decision to fly and bus into state, under cover of night, thousands of unvetted unlawful-entry foreign nationals, and then release them onto our streets, endangering the public safety and health,” Cox speculates, wildly.

“This guy is known to be a QAnon conspiracy theorist,” said Michael Ricci, a Hogan spokesman. “He has this weird obsession with the governor. Surprised it took this long, frankly.”

Cox is the only sponsor of the impeachment resolution. It is not clear if any other Maryland Republicans might support the charges, according to The Daily Record, but leaders of the 42-member House Republican Caucus said it did not have caucus support.

“No, it’s not supported by caucus certainly,” said Delegate Jason Buckel, a Republican from Allegany and leader of the House Republican Caucus.

“Dan Cox is what happens when crazy meets stupid,” said Doug Mayer, a former Hogan spokesman who is now a senior adviser to the Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Schulz. “A person who believes that Mike Pence is a traitor and that the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated Maryland state government is not a rational actor.”

“Unfortunately for his constituents, he’s also an extremely ineffective legislator who consistently fails to do anything remotely productive in service to them,” Mayer said. “Add today’s nonsense to his long list of failures.”

This is not the first time Cox has clashed with Hogan.

Cox, an attorney in his first term in the House, represented a number of businesses and churches in an unsuccessful federal lawsuit against Hogan over pandemic orders that closed businesses. Cox took on the governor again when he sponsored failed legislation to limit executive authority in states of emergency.

Cox has also called Schulz a “RINO”, or Republican in name only.

Last year, Cox apologized in writing to fellow lawmakers for calling Republican Vice President Mike Pence “a traitor” on the afternoon of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. He later deleted his Twitter account.

But Trump endorsed Cox’s campaign for governor in 2022.

The bus effort was in partnership with the Frederick County Conservative Club, ultimately sending three busloads of Maryland Republicans to Trump’s rally.

It’s unclear how long the group was in Washington or if any of its members participated in the attack on the Capitol.

Fred Propheter, the club’s president, “condemned” the behavior of the insurrectionists on Facebook, but called the terrorist attack “mild” in comparison to the riots that followed the death of George Floyd over the summer.

“No, this is not a ‘yeah, what aboutism’. This was nearly 2,000,000 Patriots who came to the seat of our national government to redress our grievances with said government,” Propheter wrote on the club’s public Facebook page. “The lawlessness of the .0001% of today’s crowd in no way shape or form is representative of the Conservative movement. Those were Antifa infiltrators and agitators with a few Trump supporters thrown in.”

That is a false conspiracy theory, and we have previously reported that Black Lives Matter protesters and Antifa issued a “stand down” order warning their people to stay away from Trump’s rally, based on advance intelligence that they were going to be beaten and blamed for any violence on Jan. 6.

Inside sources in Antifa told me on the telephone that week that they were more than 1,000 miles away in a campground in Florida, far away from the rally and insurrection, having been warned in advance.

In December, 2020, they had confronted members of the Proud Boys on K Street in D.C. and Metro Police officers beat them and arrested them, while letting members of the Proud Boys go free.

In the past, Cox has expressed support for Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the leader of the far-right organization the Proud Boys.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Cox continued to tweet into the evening about unconfirmed allegations that members of the anti-fascist movement started the riot, which he compared to the hordes of women who descended upon the Capitol during Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018 and the protests that occurred in Washington over the summer.

He also retweeted a bootleg version of the video Trump posted Wednesday during the attack where Trump asked the rioters to “go home” while also insisting that the results of the Nov. 3 election were “fraudulent.”

“Go home. We love you — you’re very special,” the president said. “You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.”

Troubled by Cox’s comments, some of his Republican colleagues in the General Assembly responded.

“Dan, you are better than this,” Del. Jazz M. Lewis (D-Prince George’s) said on Twitter. “Please don’t cosign this lawlessness.”

Cox made his Twitter account private after that, and the Frederick County Democratic Central Committee started a letter-writing campaign requesting Cox’s expulsion from the General Assembly.

“I believe that allowing Delegate Cox to spread blatant falsehoods and foment insurrection without consequences creates a dangerous precedent,” a sample email shared by the committee reads. “I urge his immediate expulsion from the House of Delegates. Leaders are tested in times of crisis; I’m looking for you to lead and call for his expulsion.”

For his part, apparently in an effort to appease the right-wing Republican base, Hogan this week called on the Maryland Board of Education to lift all mask mandates in public schools, even though he has no executive power to order such a move in this state.

Similar movements are facing others involved in the insurrection in other states, including Madison Cawthorn in Western North Carolina.

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