Delegates to Utah’s Emery County Republican Party Convention are planning to censure Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for providing “aid and comfort” — the language the Constitution uses to define treason — to Democrats.
The censure resolution — currently scheduled for Thursday evening — accuses Romney of several acts the delegates believe to to be anti-Republican – the main one being that the senator voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in both 2019 and 2021.
They claim Romney gave “aid and comfort to the Democratic party” by voting to remove Trump during the first impeachment trial when he was accused of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Joe Biden in exchange for a White House meeting.
They also accuse him of “abusing his power” and supporting “a false liberal narrative” when he voted to convict Trump a second time after he was accused of inciting an insurrection that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Six Republican senators, besides Romney, also voted with the Democrats during that trial — making Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan impeachment vote in U.S. history.
In addition to being disgruntled by his stance on Trump’s impeachment trials, they also accuse Romney of helping the Democratic Party “elect an incompetent, radical democrat who has done irreparable damage to the United States,” the resolution says.
Jesse Sloan — one of three sponsors of the censure resolution — claims his disagreements with Romney are not personal, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
“I’d like to see him on our team again. I’d like to see him working for Republicans. The sentiment down here is he helped the other party defeat Trump in 2020,” Sloan said.
The censure resolution also attacks Romney for participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C. following the death of George Floyd and for voting with Democrats on a gun bill.
“Senator Romney provided aid and comfort to the Democratic party by marching with Black Lives Matter, an openly communist anti-American and anti-Republican organization…Romney joined with the radical democrats and voted for an unconstitutional gun control bill that violates the second, fifth and fourteenth amendments,” the resolution reads.
This is not the first time Utah Republicans have voted to censure Romney.
Some GOP legislators were so outraged after Romney voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, state Republicans filed a bill seeking a censure. But instead of a following through with the censure, legislative leaders sent Trump a citation letter that commended him for what they described as actions affecting the nation and the state of Utah positively.
And in 2021, some members of the Utah Republican Party State Central Committee circulated a censure motion accusing Romney of being “an agent for the Establishment Deep State” and of harboring a “personal vendetta” against Trump. That effort did not go anywhere. But soon after, Weber County Republicans did censure Romney over his votes to convict the former president at his impeachment trials.
Romney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the upcoming censure vote.
Read the censure resolution here:
