Senator Josh Hawley’s, R-Mo., wife and newborn daughter were home alone when ShutdownDC decided to attack their home, in what the Antifa group describes as a “vigil,” over the Senator’s decision to contest the 2020 election results on January 6.

“Tonight while I was in Missouri, Antifa scumbags came to our place in DC and threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door. Let me be clear: My family & I will not be intimidated by leftwing violence,” Senator Hawley said in a Twitter post.

“Now ‘vigil’ means screaming threats through bullhorns, vandalizing property, pounding on the doors of homes and terrorizing innocent people and children,” he went on to say in another tweet.

According to ShutdownDC, “This evening, around a dozen activists with ShutdownDC held an hour-long vigil at the Virginia home of Sen. Josh Hawley to demand that he drop his baseless contestation of the 2020 presidential election results…Activists lit candles and delivered a copy of the U.S. Constitution to Hawley’s door. The crowd chanted ‘Shame! Shame on Hawley!’ and ‘Protect Democracy from the GOP.’ They also read messages from voters in the states whose election results Hawley and the other Senators are planning to contest, including Missouri and Pennsylvania. Police arrived at around 7:45PM.”

Of course, though Antifa may excel at riots, vandalism and property destruction, the simple act of reading the Senator’s schedule must have escaped them as Hawley was in Missouri last night.

The only people home were Erin, Hawley’s wife, and their newborn daughter, who were unable to travel due to the baby’s recent arrival.

When Erin asked the “protestors,” who were using a bullhorn, to leave since there was a baby inside the house and they had neighbors, one could be heard saying, “We need a future for your baby.” Another said, “This is unacceptable.”

Later, one could be heard yelling, “This is a dangerous attack on our democracy.” A man with a bullhorn could be heard shouting, “Sir. We’re not going to let people hold our democracy hostage. We’re not going to let them infringe on their rights.”

But, apparently, it’s perfectly okay to hold a mother and newborn baby hostage inside a house during a “vigil” while they yell through bullhorns at a Senator who isn’t even in the state at the time.

The man with the bullhorn went on to yell, “Every ballot has been counted and it’s over. If democracy is under attack, what do we do?”

The crowd responded, “We fight back.”

For a mother and a child inside a home, that’s a rather frightening threat. But since Hawley is a Republican and a conservative, ShutdownDC didn’t see it that way.

“This was not threatening behavior,” Patrick Young, a ShutDownDC organizer, said in an interview with the sympathetic Washington Post. “This is people engaging in democracy and engaging in civil discourse. … This was a pretty tame and peaceful visit to his house.”

It might not seem threatening to people who do this for a living and thrive off chaos, but there’s no doubt it was for Erin and her daughter.

Hawley responded to the article on Twitter, stating, “@WashingtonPost this morning printing outright lies from the Antifa group who now describe themselves as sweet angels. BS. You screamed through bullhorns, shouted down my wife when she asked you to leave, vandalized property, pounded on our door, and terrorized the neighbors…And didn’t have the guts to do it in daylight, but only under cover of darkness so you could hide. You’re scum. And we won’t be intimidated.”

And what purpose? As The Daily Citizen’s Bruce Hausknecht recently explained in an article earlier today, the official protest of Hawley and other Senators and Representatives, which is an expression of their rights, will likely have little effect on the outcome of a certification. And the man they were seeking to influence wasn’t even home at the time.

The right to protest has been enshrined in the Constitution, but not the right to harass family members of our elected officials. ShutdownDC can protest but do it on Capitol Hill or elsewhere and not in suburbia on the lawns of a young family.

Photo from POOL/REUTERS