Paul Gosar Military Controversy Arizona

Paul Gosar Used His Taxpayer-Funded Newsletter to Say the Nation's Top General "Would Be Hung"

In September 2023 his official newsletter called Gen. Mark Milley a traitor and said that "in a better society" he would be hanged — blaming him for a Jan. 6 delay, citing testimony that never mentioned him.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 08, 2026

Members of Congress send weekly newsletters. They are official communications, produced by official staff, distributed through official channels, paid for by the public. They are usually about a water project or a veterans' benefits deadline.

In September 2023, Paul Gosar used his — a newsletter called This Week with Gosar — to say that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be hanged.

The exact words

Writing about a House hearing into the security failures of January 6, Gosar blamed Gen. Mark Milley, then the nation's highest-ranking military officer, for the delay in getting National Guard troops to the Capitol.

Then, as Cronkite News reported, he wrote:

"In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung."

He had already described Milley in the same newsletter as "the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs," and branded him a "traitor."

A quisling is a traitor who collaborates with an occupying enemy. The word exists because of Vidkun Quisling, who was executed by firing squad in 1945.

The accusation was made up

This is the part that gets lost, and it shouldn't.

Gosar's newsletter blamed Milley specifically, and cited the testimony of former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund as his source.

Sund's testimony did not mention Milley. Not once. Cronkite News checked: Gosar laid the blame on Milley "citing Sund's testimony, even though Sund made no mention of Milley and said he dealt directly with a different lieutenant general."

What Sund actually testified was that he requested National Guard assistance on January 3 and was turned down by Congress's two sergeants-at-arms over concerns about "the politics and optics" of troops at the Capitol. On January 6 itself, he said it took more than an hour to get approval from the sergeant-at-arms, and nearly five more hours in which he "had to beg" the Pentagon before Guard troops arrived.

So there is a real, documented story about a delay on January 6. Gosar took that story, attached the name of a man the source never named, called him a traitor, and said he should be hanged.

That is not heated rhetoric about a disagreement. It is a fabricated charge with a death penalty appended.

What people said at the time

Kyle Kondik, editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, on where Gosar sits in the House: "There are a lot of rhetorical bomb throwers in Washington, and I don't know if anyone surpasses Gosar in that group. Gosar may be the leading one."

Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster, was blunter:

"When you're getting to the level of basically making threats, death threats, and especially in this day and age, it's incredibly irresponsible and frankly, the congressman should be ashamed of himself."

Neither Milley's office nor Gosar's responded to requests for comment.

Nothing happened

Two years earlier, the House had censured Gosar and stripped his committees for posting a video of himself killing a colleague. That happened because Democrats controlled the chamber and forced a floor vote.

By September 2023, Republicans held the House. Cronkite News noted the obvious consequence: it was "unlikely that Gosar will be censured for his latest comments."

He wasn't. There was no censure, no ethics referral, no rebuke from leadership that anyone recorded. Noble's assessment of why: "There's really no consequence for doing it, at least electorally. He's got a ton of MAGA-type supporters and this type of rhetoric has kind of been accepted already."

That is what changed between 2021 and 2023. Not Gosar. The majority.

Why the newsletter part matters most

Anyone can say something ugly online. There is a whole industry of it.

This was different in a specific way: it was an official congressional communication. Not a campaign email, not a personal account, not a rally. A publication produced by his congressional office, with congressional staff, distributed to constituents at public expense — the same channel used for town hall notices and casework updates.

The taxpayers of Arizona's 9th District paid to send out a document calling for the execution of an American general.

And it was not the first time an official channel carried this kind of content from him. The anime video that got him censured was posted to his official House social media accounts too.

The record

Paul Gosar's uses of official congressional resources include:

An official social media post depicting himself killing a member of Congress and lunging at the President — 3.3 million views before he took it down.
A letter on congressional letterhead to the FBI defending the white nationalist Nick Fuentes over his no-fly-list placement, as Talking Points Memo documented.
An official newsletter saying the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be hanged, on a charge the cited testimony did not support.

He has been in Congress since 2011. He is on the ballot again this year.