Gov. Chris Sununu has called for the removal of a fellow New Hampshire Republican from his position as chairman of a finance committee in the Legislature for spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines.
According to WMUR, State Rep. Ken Weyler, chairman of the state’s House Finance Committee, had a confrontational exchange in September with new Hampshire’s Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette, who confronted him at a hearing for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines currently available to the public. In that role, Weyler is the state House’s top budget writer.
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On Monday, New Hampshire House Democrats said Weyler sent the entire Joint Finance Committee a 52-page document titled “The Vaccine Death Report,” which made a series of conspiratorial claims, including that living organisms with tentacles are entering people’s bodies through COVID-19 vaccines, nanotechnology in the vaccines will be used to control people’s thoughts through 5G, and that babies are being born to vaccinated parents with “pitch-black eyes.”
“Rep. Weyler sent the Fiscal Committee a 52 pg “report,” including claims that live creatures with tentacles are entering people’s bodies through the COVID vaccine. Continued disinformation on COVID is a danger to public health in NH.” -Rep. Mary Jane Wallner #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/CoRyOJlDn0
— NH House Democrats (@NHHouseDems) October 4, 2021
The document also made a series of bigoted and unfounded claims about the Catholic Church while objecting to Pope Francis’s calls for the faithful to be vaccinated. It claimed that the Church is controlled by multiple popes who operate in the shadows and “are satanists, also called luciferians.”
The anti-Catholic propaganda is bad politics in the Granite State, which has a higher-than-average percentage of residents who identify as Catholic. A 2017 Gallup survey found that about 23% of people identify as Catholic, but 30% of New Hampshire residents identify as Catholic, making it the eighth-most Catholic state that year.
In a statement, House Democrats said, “The continued dissemination of disinformation on COVID from Rep. Weyler is a danger to public health in New Hampshire and to the credibility of the legislature as a whole.”
Sununu said in a statement Monday that he has “repeatedly” shared his view to House Speaker Sherman Packard that Weyler should be removed from his leadership position, calling the lawmaker’s emails “absurd.”
“Disseminating this misinformation clearly shows a detachment from reality and lack of judgment,” Sununu said.
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New Hampshire has the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, outdone only by the U.S. House of Representatives and the British Parliament. The New Hampshire State House prides itself on its “citizen legislature” that includes 400 members, who are each paid $200 per term.
Members of the New Hampshire Legislature are no strangers to notoriety — one member resigned in 2001 for endorsing the killing of police officers, another resigned last year after a crass tweet about a woman who accused then-presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexual misconduct.
