To the Journal editor:

The day after the U.S. Capitol was overrun by a mob intent on interrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s election, I spent the morning nauseated by what U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman-Watersmeet, had done while I was sleeping.

Despite seeing the afternoon’s violence close-up, he doubled-down and objected to the electoral vote counts of both Arizona and Pennsylvania–an act that fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney described as “an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the president and bestowing it instead on Congress” and about which Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said “the voters, the courts and the states have all spoken,” arguing that overruling them would “damage our republic forever” and cause democracy to “enter a death spiral.”

Bergman’s action was similar to one a few weeks earlier when he signed onto the amicus brief supporting the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the votes of four states, including Michigan, that Joe Biden won. In both cases, he justified his actions by saying they were intended to restore confidence in the millions of Americans who have lost faith in the election process.

That is a jaw-dropping example of circular logic. From election day to the present, Jack Bergman has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the outcome.

As a famous quote (variously attributed to Lenin, Hitler, or Goebbels) goes, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” And so, Bergman and others constantly questioned the election results without any supporting evidence until millions of people concluded that it was stolen …

Some of those people who believed those lies traveled to Washington, D.C. last week. After a last-minute pep talk by the president, they swarmed the nation’s capitol building, halted the proceedings and forced Bergman and other elected representatives to hide.

After reflecting for a few days, my disgust with Bergman for his actions has not subsided–his support of the lawsuit and objection votes were acts of sedition.

But I now realize that he also has responsibility for the attack on the capitol itself. After all, those people were in D.C. and participated in the insurrection because they believed the lies that Bergman and his cronies are spreading.