Letters

Lee Zeldin’s sponsorship of Trump’s delusion that he won reelection has contributed to the death of six people (including two officers of the Capitol Police Department), the desecration of the Capitol building and an assault on the Constitution.

Last month, Mr. Zeldin signed on to an attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to validate Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud. After the court swatted away this feckless effort, Mr. Zeldin continued to assert Trump’s challenges to the election.

On January 6, Trump repeated his lies concerning the election in an hour-long rant delivered to the seditious and murderous mob assembled behind the White House in response to his invitation to come to Washington to participate in activities he promised would be “wild.” Trump restated his lies, previously endorsed by Mr. Zeldin, to inflame the mob and then directed an assault on Capitol Hill, where a joint session of Congress was counting votes cast by the Electoral College.

Several hours later, after Mr. Zeldin had witnessed the violence and destruction inspired by Trump’s malicious rhetoric, Mr. Zeldin voted to sustain Trump’s baseless objection to the certification of votes cast by Arizona electors.

In an email received by me on January 9, Mr. Zeldin refers to our “precarious future as a republic.” If that future is precarious (and I hope that it is not), it is so thanks to four years of spineless acquiescence by Mr. Zeldin and his fellow travelers in Trump’s thuggish, ignorant and murderous abuse of power.

At last count, six people have died as a result of Trump’s insurrection. The country is dealing with a constitutional crisis. Mr. Zeldin’s endorsement of the lies that are at the heart of the matter makes him complicit in this catastrophe.

The time has arrived for him to resign.

William Power Maloney

Hampton Bays

Mr. Maloney appears to be including in the total number of deaths related to the events of January 6 the reported suicide of a Capitol Police officer — Ed.