While Senator Josh Hawley faces increasing pressure to resign from Congress after embracing President Trump’s election challenge, Missouri Governor Mike Parson remained silent about whether his Republican colleague should resign.
Parson, who swore an oath on Monday, dodged a question the same day about whether Hawley, Missouri’s junior senator, should resign, instead urging reporters to focus on his inauguration.
“You know, everyone has to be responsible for the decisions they make, good or bad, indifferent,” said Parson, according to the Kansas City Star. “That’s what I’m going to say.”
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Although Parson acknowledged that there has been “a lot of discussion about it”, he asked that attention remain in his possession, calling it “a special day for me and my family” and “for our state”.
“We will be talking about Washington, DC, every day from now on, probably at some level of that,” he added.
Hawley, who was photographed saluting pro-Trump protesters before they invaded the Capitol, has faced strong political reaction since Wednesday’s deadly disturbances: a former mentor rejected him, Simon & Schuster abandoned plans to publish his next book, a A prominent donor who gave Hawley millions asked for him to be censored and Democrats, as well as a handful of Republicans, accused him of helping to incite the violence that left five people, including a US Capitol policeman, dead.
Hawley, along with Senator Ted Cruz, emerged as one of the Senate’s most fervent defenders for challenging the certification of votes from the Electoral College, leading a group of 11 senators who demanded a 10-day delay to audit the election results, although they did not evidence of widespread fraud has emerged in the two months since the election.
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The senators ended up withdrawing their objections for Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, but Hawley co-signed the opposition to Pennsylvania as soon as the Senate met after the siege, attracting a quick rebuke from some of his colleagues.
“Senator Hawley was doing something that was really stupid-,” Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican, told NPR on Friday. “That was a blow. It was a terrible, terrible idea. And you don’t lie to the American people. And this is what is happening.”
Former Missouri Senator John Danforth, a close mentor to Hawley before the protests broke out, told the Kansas City Star that Hawley was responsible for the turmoil and that supporting him was “the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.”
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Hawley, who condemned the violence, rejected resignations.
“I will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said in a statement on Thursday. “This is my job and I will keep doing it.”