A Tennessee Lawmaker Tried to Weaponize the TBI Against Her Own Constituents — Here Are the Facts

Most Tennesseans never heard about this bill. But they should have.
In January 2021, just days after the events at the United States Capitol in Washington D.C., Memphis Democratic Representative London Lamar filed legislation that would have directed the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to target Tennesseans who attended the January 6 protests. Not just those who broke the law. Not just those who entered the Capitol building. Every Tennessean suspected of participating in what Lamar called seditious or treasonous acts — a definition broad enough to sweep up thousands of ordinary Tennessee citizens who traveled to Washington D.C. that day to peacefully exercise their constitutional right to protest.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A sitting Tennessee state legislator wanted to use our own state law enforcement agency as a political weapon against Tennessee citizens for attending a political rally.

What the Bill Actually Said
House Bill 0111, filed by Rep. London Lamar of Memphis, called for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to investigate each Tennessean suspected of participating in seditious or treasonous acts relating to the events that transpired at the federal Capitol Building in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
The bill went even further — clarifying that such acts committed by state elected officials would constitute grounds for their removal from office.
Read that carefully. A Democratic legislator filed a bill that would have given the state the power to remove elected Republican officials from office based on their presence at a political rally in Washington D.C. This was not about prosecuting violence. This was about political targeting dressed up as public safety legislation.
Lamar filed the legislation after posting on her Facebook page in a post titled “The Line Has Been Drawn” which accused President Trump and his supporters of engaging in acts of sedition and treason to promote white supremacy — a post that was later removed from public view.
When the political winds shifted and the post drew scrutiny — it disappeared. The legislation, however, was already in the record.

Who Was Actually There
Before we go any further it is important to establish what the record actually shows about the people who traveled to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
Tennesseans who traveled to Washington D.C. noted that the vast majority of people who were there were peaceful.
Hundreds of thousands of American citizens — including many Tennesseans — traveled to the nation’s capital that day to attend a political rally. They did not break windows. They did not assault police officers. They stood on the National Mall, listened to speeches, and exercised the same First Amendment rights that Americans have exercised for more than two centuries.
Rep. Lamar’s bill made no meaningful distinction between those peaceful attendees and those who actually broke the law. It painted every Tennessean who was present with the same broad brush — and proposed using Tennessee’s own law enforcement bureau to investigate them as potential traitors.
That is not justice. That is political persecution.

Why This Matters in 2026
I have served in the Tennessee House of Representatives long enough to recognize a political bill when I see one. House Bill 0111 was not about public safety. It was not about accountability. It was about using the machinery of state government to punish political opponents and silence dissent.
The irony should not be lost on anyone. The same voices that spent years warning about government overreach — about surveillance, about the weaponization of law enforcement against citizens — were perfectly comfortable directing Tennessee’s own investigators to target Tennesseans for attending a political rally.
I think about the Tennesseans who drove to Washington D.C. that January. Many of them were grandparents. Veterans. Small business owners. Farmers. People who had never been in trouble with the law a day in their lives. People who believed — rightly or wrongly — that their concerns about the 2020 election deserved to be heard. Under Rep. Lamar’s bill every single one of them could have been subjected to a TBI investigation simply for being present.
That is not the Tennessee I know. And it is not the Tennessee I will ever stop fighting for.

A Pattern Worth Remembering
This bill did not pass. Tennessee’s Republican majority ensured it never made it out of committee. But the fact that it was filed — that a sitting Tennessee legislator thought it was appropriate to propose using state law enforcement to investigate citizens for attending a political rally — tells us something important about the philosophy of government that some in this building actually believe in.
Government power used against political opponents is tyranny — regardless of which party wields it and regardless of which side of the political aisle you sit on. I have said that about Republicans when it applied. I am saying it about Democrats now.
Scripture is clear on this. Proverbs 17:15 tells us that “acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — the Lord detests them both.” Justice must be applied equally, blindly, and without political favor. The moment we begin using law enforcement as a political tool — targeting citizens not for what they did but for what they believe — we have lost something fundamental about who we are as Americans.
The people of Tennessee deserve better. They always have. And as long as I serve in this House I will make sure they get it.