Fellow Yale Law alum questions Hawley’s role in Capitol violence

A 2006 Yale Law School graduate is one of the political figures at the center of the debate following Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley was shown in a widely circulated photo making a clenched fist salute in support of the massive crowd of protesters in D.C., before some from the crowd formed a mob that forced its way into the Capitol. Hawley’s office later put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway, according to the Kansas City Star newspaper.

Irina Manta, who was in Hawley’s Yale Law graduating class, said the clenched-fist gesture “is quite telling.” Manta is a law professor at Hofstra University and founding director of the school’s Center for Intellectual Property Law.

“Whether it was gesture of violence is open to interpretation,” she said in an interview Thursday with Hearst Connecticut Media. “But it was the absolutely a gesture of solidarity (with the mob).”

Hawley has become a central figure in efforts to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election, and was the first federal lawmaker to say he would oppose the certification of an Electoral College win by President-Elect Joe Biden.

Across the nation, local and state election officials and courts have found no credible evidence of significant fraud in the 2020 election.

“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” the senator said in a statement late last month. “I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections.”

Manta wrote an opinion piece in USA Today which appeared Tuesday and accused her former classmate of “eroding our democratic system” by his actions.

Manta said Hawley’s behavior regarding the Electoral College certification and his support of the pro-Trump protesters were “definitely on the extreme end of what I thought he was capable of.”

“It shows something about his character,” she said. “I have a feeling he did not mind violence happening as long it did not affect him directly. I believe he bears some of the responsibility for the violence that occurred; it wasn’t that he was just somebody who went along.”

In a program from Hawley’s 2006 Yale Law School graduation, the future senator described himself as a “philosopher-in-action.”

“It’s easy to forget, in the crush of learning rules and precedents, that all law is for something, directed toward some end,” Hawley said at the time. “The job of the reflective practitioner, I take it, is to help ensure those ends are the right ones.”

Hawley’s efforts to overturn the election results have drawn condemnation from other Yale Law alumni, as well.

Hundreds of Yale Law alumni had signed an online petition criticizing Hawley’s actions prior to Wednesday’s certification vote and mob violence at the Capitol. Manta was among those who signed the petition.

Even before he became the first senator to oppose the Electoral College certification of a Biden win, Hawley had been mentioned by pundits as a potential 2024 presidential candidate. Manta said she believes Hawley used Trump’s assertions of voter fraud as a way to raise his political profile for a potential run for the White House.

“There is a real question about who is going to inherit Trump’s voters,” she said. “This was political theater for him: I find it hard to believe that in his heart of hearts that really thinks there was fraud.”

In New Haven, Yale University President Peter Salovey was quick to criticize the siege of the Capitol in a message to the university community, though he did not mention Hawley.

“Today in the United States Capitol, as senators and representatives were carrying out the constitutional process of certifying the winner of the presidential election, a mob used violence and menace to disrupt this most basic functioning of our democracy,” Salovey’s message Wednesday said, in part. “The acts of the rioters were disgraceful; they demonstrated a fundamental disrespect for, and attempted subversion of, a cherished American institution. The violence we saw today on Capitol Hill underscores for me that our democracy must enjoy complete and uncompromised protection.”

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com