One America News personality Pearson Sharp unleashed an openly fascistic fantasy this week, calling for the mass executions for thousands of Americans based on his belief in the outright false claim that widespread voter fraud amounted to a “coup” against former president Donald Trump.
Since last November’s election, in which Joe Biden handily defeated Trump, OAN has led the charge in peddling unhinged conspiracy theories in order to push the ex-president’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him. In recent weeks, the fringe network has sponsored the so-called Arizona election “audit,” with OAN host Christina Bobb fundraising for the effort while also serving as a legal adviser to Trump.
The GOP-led recount in Arizona—a state Biden narrowly won—has led right-wing media figures to push for other audits in battleground states that Trump lost, resulting in the false belief that the ex-president will eventually be reinstated this summer. (Trump has, naturally, latched onto this insane theory.)
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During an on-air essay that first aired Tuesday night, Sharp—who has repeatedly lied about the 2020 election and Jan. 6 insurrection—embraced these latest attempts to discredit Biden’s victory to call for harsh retribution against Democrats.
Citing long-debunked claims that there were “widespread problems with voting integrity” in 2020, Sharp claimed that “the radical Democrats left fingerprints all over the country, providing a trail of evidence that the 2020 election was not only tampered with, it was actually overthrown.” He then said this “raises questions” over the level of involvement in the nonexistent election fraud.
“How many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?” Sharp dramatically asked. “How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency?”
The OAN windbag continued: “When all the dust settles from the audit in Arizona and the potential audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin, what happens to all these people who are responsible for overthrowing the election? What are the consequences for traitors who meddled with our sacred democratic process and tried to steal power by taking away the voices of the American people? What happens to them?”
In a hauntingly calm manner, Sharp answered his own question.
“Well, in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: Execution,” he bluntly declared.
“Treason is considered the highest of all crimes and is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution which states that anyone is guilty of treason if they support America’s enemies,” Sharp added.
“So far, there have been numerous indications that foreign governments, including China and Pakistan, meddled in our election to install Joe Biden as president,” he concluded. “Any Americans involved in these efforts—from those who ran the voting machines to the very highest government officials—is guilty of treason under U.S. Code 2381, which carries with it the penalty of death.”
One America News did not respond to a request for further clarification of Sharp’s remarks appearing to call for mass executions.
In a comment to Talking Points Memo, however, Sharp asserted that “neither I, nor OAN, are suggesting anyone should be executed. That is for the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine.” He went on to add that “OAN is simply pointing out that if election fraud is proven, then it could very well constitute treason. And according to our laws, treason is punishable by death.”
After first sharing the clip of Sharp’s essay online, The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer noted that adherents of dangerous far-right conspiracy QAnon see this commentary “as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner.” Q followers have long waited for prominent Democrats, who they believe to be part of a Satanic child-sex cabal, to be executed en masse.
Meanwhile, as Sharp contends that other audits will finally provide overwhelming proof of widespread voter fraud, a new report spearheaded by Michigan Republicans comprehensively debunks the array of false election claims made by Trump, his legal team, and other right-wing figures. The report even calls for the state’s attorney general to consider investigating those who peddled false information about vote counts in the state “to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
