Republicans caught delivering suspicious packages to House Democrats to try to distract from Trump impeachment vote

| 7:45 pm EDT October 31, 2019
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As the day has gone on, we’ve documented the various ways in which the Republicans in Congress have gone off the rails in response to the House impeachment resolution vote. Kevin McCarthy repeatedly humiliated himself, for instance, while Louie Gohmert began talking about “civil war.” But now it turns out things were much uglier than that.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) delivered empty boxes to at least seven House Democrats today, with notes attached that said “get packing.” This is according to Sarah Ferris of Politico, who says that the “menacing” looking boxes were then investigated by Capitol Police as “suspicious packages.” The police ended up taking the packages as evidence.

Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, one of the people targeted by the suspicious packages, tweeted this in response: “I’d like to thank the Capitol Police for their professionalism in responding to the suspicious package left at our office today. The NRCC pulled a ridiculous stunt, leaving suspicious packages across Capitol Hill and diverting and wasting law enforcement resources.” Incredibly, the NRCC then taunted Spanberger by tweeting this in response: “Save the box. You’ll need it next November.”

This sounds like some kind of quasi-domestic terrorist threat to us. If the average person pulled pulled this kind of stunt, they’d be criminally investigated for it, and could face charges. We’ll see if the NRCC leadership ends up having to answer to law enforcement over this. In any case, this further serves to demonstrate just how frantically out of control the Republicans are when it comes to trying to distract from an impeachment process against Donald Trump that they know they can’t stop.