Video uploaded to social media shows that a lawmaker from West Virginia was among those who broke into the nation’s Capitol to prevent Joe Biden’s Electoral College win from being certified on Wednesday.
According to the Associated Press, Republican Delegate Derrick Evans uploaded a video to social media showing him among a mob of people breaking into the Capitol. At one point in the video, Evans can be heard saying “We’re in! We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
It’s referring to himself in the third person while committing a crime, for me. It’s also the fact he uploaded a video of himself committing said crime to social media. Apparently, all it takes to storm the Capitol is white skin and an inability to think before you act.
Evans was elected to represent Wayne County in November and was only sworn into his first term last month. That term is looking like it might be quite short as Democratic Party leaders are calling on Evans to resign and face prosecution for his role in yesterday’s events. A petition demanding he be removed from office has already received over 10,000 signatures.
West Virginia Democratic House Minority Leader Doug Skaff has called on Roger Hanshaw, speaker of the state House of Delegates, to launch an investigation into Evans and to suspend his access to the statehouse. “Delegate Derrick Evans not only participated in this violent, intentional disruption of government; he helped lead a group that he organized to travel to Washington, D.C., to cause this chaos,” Skaff said in a statement.
On Tuesday night, Evans had posted an image of himself and a large group of maskless people riding the COVID Express to D.C. He wrote in his post that they had two packed buses filled with people traveling from West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
Hanshaw has called on Evans to “answer to his constituents and colleagues regarding his involvement in what has occurred today.”
“While free speech and peaceful protests are a core value of American society, storming government buildings and participating in a violent intentional disruption of one of our nation’s most fundamental political institutions is a crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Hanshaw told WOWK-TV.
Jared Hunt, a House spokesman, told AP that Hanshaw is currently “gathering as much information possible about what has happened, and will evaluate all the potential consequences once the totality of the situation is understood.”
Evans has since tried to downplay his role in Wednesday’s events, uploading a post to Facebook saying that he was returning to West Virginia and that he was only there as “an independent member of the media.”
Nigga.
The media? The media. He broke into the Capitol, but don’t worry, it’s fine because he was “independent media.” As a group of people who work for a media organization, if any of our Black asses tried to even forcibly enter a Denny’s, I don’t think pulling out the media card would help us.
Also, it’s just a straight-up lie. Dude isn’t “independent media.” He’s an elected official. There are, allegedly, certain standards of behavior that we expect from our elected officials. Staging an insurrection because you can’t take an L is just something you don’t fucking do.