A One America News Network personality denies he suggested that “traitors” who “stole” the 2020 election should be executed while he pushed the conspiracy theory that widespread fraud kept former President Donald Trump from a second term in the White House.
Clips on social media that emerged Wednesday evening showed Pearson Sharp in a segment in which he said, “In the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors” who were “involved in these efforts to undermine the election.” And that’s “execution.”
The headlines that ensued in publications such as the Daily Beast and the Independent said he was calling for, or at least suggesting, that people be executed on the far-flung premise the November contest was rigged, as Trump has claimed.
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But the television personality told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that such characterizations of his comments were inaccurate.
“Neither I or OAN are suggesting anyone should be executed,” he said.
“I’m simply reporting that conspiring against the government to overthrow an election, with the help of a foreign government, would be treason. If that is investigated, and if that is proven, then US laws maintain that execution is a legal punishment for those crimes,” he added in a written message.
Sharp also said legal penalties are up to “the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine,” and he said the network “is simply pointing out that if election fraud is proven, then it could very well constitute treason. And according to our laws, treason is punishable by death. If it is found that government officials coordinated with foreign countries to overthrow the election, then that would be the very definition of treason. Which, according to our nation’s laws, could result in execution.”
In the Tuesday segment, he said there have been “numerous indications that foreign governments including China and Pakistan meddled in our election to install Joe Biden as president” and that “any Americans involved in these efforts … is guilty of treason.”
Following the 2020 election, which President Joe Biden won with 306 electoral votes, Trump and his allies filed legal challenges to the results in several states. These were roundly dismissed by the courts, but the former president continually asserts the contest was rigged in some way.
Federal, state, and local election officials, including Republicans, have insisted the November election was secure, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud. This includes government agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which released a statement in November that said the presidential election was “the most secure in American history.” This statement echoed then-Attorney General William Barr, who said the Justice Department had not “seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”
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Despite that, Sharp claimed, “simple facts point to massive and widespread problems.”
“The radical Democrats left fingerprints all over the country, providing a trail of evidence that the 2020 election was not only tampered with but was actually overthrown,” he said.
He then referred to the GOP-led Arizona Senate’s election audit in Maricopa County, which has been marred with controversy as state and federal officials raise concerns about the integrity of the process and the actors running and supporting the review.
“Which raises even more questions about exactly how many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election. Hundreds. Thousands,” Sharp said. “Tens of thousands. How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency? And when all the dust settles from the audit in Arizona, and the potential audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin. What happens to all these people who are responsible for overthrowing the election?”
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Tags: News, Journalism, Media, 2020 Elections, Donald Trump, treason
Original Author: Mike Brest
Original Location: OAN personality denies suggesting executions of ‘traitors’ who ‘stole’ 2020 election