OLYMPIA, Washington (AP) – Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday he wants lawmakers to pass legislation making spreading lies about election results a serious offense for elected officials and candidates.

The Seattle Times reported that the Democratic governor spoke out forcefully against what he called a “continuing coup” on the one-year anniversary of the Capitol uprising in Washington, DC, and a protest during from which demonstrators walked through the gate of the governor’s residence in Olympia.

Former President Donald Trump, Inslee said, “remains determined to continue this coup effort.”

“And we have to realize, unfortunately, that it’s not just in other states; it’s here in Washington state, that ongoing effort, ”Inslee told the Associated Press Legislative Preview.

Inslee, who handily defeated Republican candidate Loren Culp in the 2020 election, cited three Republican state lawmakers who used taxpayer dollars to attend a voter fraud symposium last summer that did the trafficking of debunked conspiracy theories.

Hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, the event in South Dakota revealed no evidence of fraud in the November 2020 election, and even some of the experts Lindell invited said hack data including he had discussed were absurd.

The legislation is still being drafted and the governor has said he is working to find sponsors for the bill in order to make these lies a serious crime.

“It should not be legal in Washington state for elected officials or candidates for office to willfully lie about these election results,” Inslee said.

He later told the Seattle Times that for the serious crime to be triggered, one would have to “know that there is a potential to create violence.”

Because of this, Inslee said he believes it is constitutional and does not go against previous rulings by the state’s Supreme Court.

In a narrow 5-4 decision in 2007, the court struck down a law prohibiting candidates from deliberately making false statements about their opponents, ruling it violated the First Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantee. This decision came in the case of a candidate who was fined $ 1,000 by the state’s Public Disclosure Commission for false allegations about a state senator the candidate was contesting. .

Inslee’s proposal drew criticism from State Representative Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn.

“You fight bad speech with better speech, not criminal penalties. Threatening to jail people for political speech is as dangerous for our democracy as it is to question election results, ”he wrote on Twitter.