They went to D.C. on Jan. 6. Now they’re running for office
On Jan. 5, Charles Herbster claims, he was at Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel with the president’s two adult sons, discussing ways to pressure Congress out of certifying Joe Biden’s victory. On Jan. 6, he attended a pro-Trump rally that later led to an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
On Monday, Herbster announced his candidacy for governor of Nebraska.
Herbster, who has agricultural businesses in multiple states, is running on the same staunch pro-Trump lines that brought him to D.C. on Jan. 6. (He did not enter the Capitol that day.) And he’s not alone. From Nebraska to New Jersey, attendees of the now-infamous rally that became a riot are campaigning for elected office. One—a longshot Michigan candidate who previously organized anti-lockdown rallies in his home state—even appears to have entered the Capitol.
Attending the pre-riot rally was perfectly legal, if controversial—even some elected officials took part. Recently elected U.S. Rep. Mary Miller spoke at the rally, giving an eyebrow-raising speech in which she stated that “Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future.” Her husband (a state representative in Illinois) owns a truck with a decal for the Three Percenter Militia that was parked on Capitol grounds on the day of the riot, as The Daily Beast previously reported.
Other politicians found themselves facing graver political trouble. Derrick Evans, a new West Virginia state delegate, was arrested for allegedly storming the Capitol. And Virginia’s state Senate voted to censure Amanda Chase, a state senator who attended the pre-riot rally. (Chase made a Jan. 5 video with the head of the paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, and later went on to call the Capitol attackers “patriots.” She does not appear to have entered the Capitol.)
But now, undeterred by hundreds of arrests of rioters since Jan. 6 and the ex-president being reduced to hurling insults at the Academy Awards, a new slate of Jan. 6 rally-goers is vying for its own place in government. [Continue reading…]