A petition to disbar Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz after pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol has at least 7,500 signatures from Yale and Harvard law school alumni.
The petition says the Republican senators incited violence by “repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election.”
Chandini Jha is a law student at Yale, where Hawley also graduated. She said that fact inspired her classmates to start the petition.
“We thought as students of these institutions that have a lot of powerful lawmakers and powerful lawyers, we also had a special duty maybe to help out with this organization. It kind of motivated us to write this petition and circulate it out,” Jha said.
Jha said she hopes the petition will inspire people to file formal complaints with the offices of Disciplinary Counsel in Washington, D.C., Missouri and Texas.
She said even though disbarment would not affect Hawley's or Cruz’s eligibility to serve as elected officials, it would send a moral message.
“Enough is enough. This is unacceptable. There are certain rules that we all took an oath to follow when we became attorneys, and everyone should be held to that standard. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a senator or a member of the United States Congress. We have ethical roles in this profession, and we have an obligation and a duty to say something,” Jha said.
In New York, the state bar association said it’s considering expelling Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani after hundreds of complaints.
