Senator Josh Hawley (R MO) makes a statement after voting in the Judiciary Committee to move the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court out of committee and on to the Senate for a full vote on October 22, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Sen. Josh Hawley makes a statement on October 22, 2020, in Washington, DC.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
  • Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a column defending militia members when he was 15 years old. 
  • The column was published in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. 
  • Hawley supported Trump’s voter-fraud claims in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who backed former President Donald Trump’s voter fraud claims following the 2020 election, wrote a column in which he defended the Oklahoma City bomber when he was 15 years old, according to a report from the Kansas City Star.

The Kansas City Star reported that following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Hawley wrote a column for his hometown paper, The Lexington News, in which he warned against calling anti-government militia members domestic terrorists.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols – the men who carried out the bombing that killed 169 people – had ties with the Michigan Militia, an anti-government group dating back to the 1990s.

“Many of the people populating these movements are not radical, right-wing, pro-assault weapons freaks as they were originally stereotyped,” Hawley wrote about militia groups. “Dismissed by the media and treated with disdain by their elected leaders, these citizens come together and form groups that often draw more media fire as anti-government hate gatherings.”

“Feeling alienated from their government and the rest of society, they often become disenchanted and slip into talks of ‘conspiracy theories’ about how the federal government is out to get them,” he added.

Also in the column, Hawley said former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman was being unfairly depicted as a racist after his use of racial slurs became known during the OJ Simpson trial.

"In this politically correct society, derogatory labels such as 'racist' are widely misused, and our ability to have open debate is eroding," he wrote.

In the wake of the Capitol insurrection that took place on January 6, there have been calls for Hawley to resign over his support of Trump's claims of voter fraud.

Seven Democratic senators have also called for a probe into how Hawley's and Sen. Ted Cruz's objections to the Electoral College vote potentially contributed to the violence that led to five deaths.

Hawley condemned the violence at the Capitol, but called the complaint "a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge" in a statement about the investigation.

On Monday he wrote a column for the New York Post in which he suggested he and other Republicans were victims of cancel culture and asked supporters to "stand up for the right of every American to be heard."

Hawley did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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