Letter to the editor: Lying to Congress is a crime

Sen. Ted Cruz proposed a congressional inquiry to determine the legitimacy of the 2020 election (and it failed, on Jan. 6). The idea was fine with me — but note that the line between freedom of speech and slander, defamation and sedition is not a fine one.

If you’re lying and you know it — intending to destroy reputations or livelihoods, or seize or sustain political power — there are criminal consequences. Lying to Congress under oath gets you five years in prison. U.S Code 18, Chapter 115 — Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities — prescribes up to 20 years for conspiring to “oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States” or organizing or helping to organize “any society, group, or assembly of persons who … advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence.”

No intention to suppress the genuine exercise of First Amendment rights, but if presented with a future of 5-20 years for bearing false witness, or fomenting gun-toting Proud Boys violence in D.C., I am guessing that certain Congress members, the leader of the free world and their star witnesses might have found find their time better spent on other things. NFL playoff games, for example.

Joseph Jamison

Greensburg