January 24, 2022

Newt Gingrich Sure Sounds Like He Wants January 6 Committee Members Jailed

“I think Newt has really lost it.”

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, raised quite a few eyebrows on Sunday after raising the prospect of jail time for members of the congressional special committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Gingrich’s logic, which predicted that the GOP would take back the House this November, was based on the false notion that somehow, the committee was guilty of criminal wrongdoing. 

“I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down,” Gingrich warned on Fox News. “The wolves are going to find out that they’re now sheep and they’re the ones who are in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking.”

Gingrich’s suggestion is a spectacular escalation of the concern that should Democrats lose the House, Republicans will start launching various efforts, including investigations, aimed at impeaching President Joe Biden. The remarks were roundly condemned. “I think Newt has really lost it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on CNN.

Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee also blasted Gingrich, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) invoking the classic Chris Farley gif of a crazed bus driver in “Billy Madison” to mock Gingrich.

But, rather unsurprisingly, the suggestion that committee members could face jail time does appear to have landed with some of the more colorful members of the GOP. Here’s Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on Monday getting extremely amped up by Gingrich’s comments:

As for the very real federal investigation into child sex trafficking he faces, Gaetz angrily dismissed it as nothing but Deep State nonsense.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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