Seven Senate Democrats filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday seeking an investigation into Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) after they led the effort to object to the results of the 2020 election in the Senate. That effort, as part of former President Donald Trump s failed plan to overturn the election, ultimately led to a mob storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, leaving five people dead, including a police officer.

Such an investigation is the first step for the Senate to consider punishment, including expulsion , for its members.

Cruz and Hawley were the first two Republican senators to announce that they would join Trumps effort to overturn his election loss by objecting Jan. 6 to the Electoral College votes from a handful of states President Joe Biden had won. But the counting was disrupted by an insurrection of Trump supporters incited by the former president at a rally near the White House.

Even after the insurrection at the Capitol, where both houses of Congress were meeting to certify the results, Cruz and Hawley maintained their objections to counting the electoral votes that had been certified by Arizona and Pennsylvania based on Trumps lies about widespread fraud.

By proceeding with their objections to the electors after the violent attack, Senators Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mobs cause and made future violence more likely, the complaint alleges.

Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Tina Smith (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Tim Kaine (Va.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) filed the complaint. It asks the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Cruz and Hawley for potentially coordinating with the insurrectionists or encouraging their actions and into whether the two senators violated the Senate Code of Official Conduct .

The code states that senators must [p]ut loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department and [u]phold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust. The complaint notes that the House of Representatives has disciplined members for violating this code.