Utah U.S. Reps. Burgess Owens and Chris Stewart must resign or be expelled from the House for encouraging the pro-Trump, extreme right-wing coup attempt, violently invading our nation’s Capitol building to stop the House and Senate certifying the U.S. Electoral College results that made official that Joe Biden had indisputably won the November presidential election.

Owens and Stewart were among a large group of House Republicans who encouraged the criminal insurrection by stating days earlier that they planned to challenge the Electoral College votes of various states. Never mind that the states’ election vote counts had been certified as thorough and accurate by the various state election officials, many of whom were Republicans.

They were upheld as fair and accurate in all of Trump’s various court challenges. Many of the decisions rendered of federal judges appointed by Trump including his super conservative majority Supreme Court.

I can think of only five possible reasons why our Utah representative would a take such an Illogical and danger provoking position.

First, they ignorantly disregarded the national presidential voting results that all the major news outlets had declared Biden the winner, disregarded all the different state’s election officials and all the court decisions that all came to the same conclusion, that Trump had lost and Biden had won.

Secondly, the got duped by the supreme con artist Donald Trump into believing his continuous lies that the election had been stolen and that he had actually won.

Thirdly they are ignorant enough to believe in the crazy and completely discredited QAnon conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact or reality.

The fourth is the most cynical. They hoped Trump’s coup attempt would be successful and they would be rewarded.

The last, most likely and least egregious reason is that is that it was simply a crass political decision. They didn’t want to lose Trump’s super conservative Republican base of support. If they did not support Trump’s delusion of winning the election, they might end up like former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a moderately conservative Republican with integrity, who didn’t always follow Trump’s direction. With threat of a Trump-picked primary election challenger, Flake decided not to seek reelection.

Because, for whatever the reason or combination of reasons, Owens and Stewart ignored reality and, through their actions, encouraged the violent overthrow of our democracy, they deserve to resign or be expelled for the good of a new and better Republican Party, for the good of Utah, and for the good of the nation.

William Fisher is originally from Cedar City, grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, graduated with a degree in political science from Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University) and taught English and American government for the Clark County, Nevada, School District. Now active in civic and political organizations in the Salt Lake County area.