The opening day of the 2025 West Virginia Legislature is scheduled for January 8. It is a ceremonial and organizational day where officers are elected, the 2024 election results are certified, and members take their oath of office. The business of legislating is then delayed until February 12, the first day of the 60-day regular session.
But there is one critical piece of business the House of Delegates must deal with when lawmakers meet on the 8th and that is to not seat Joseph de Soto of Berkeley County as a member of that body.
De Soto won the Republican Primary and then defeated the Constitution Party candidate in the General Election 77 percent to 23 percent. However, based on what we know from a criminal complaint, de Soto is uniquely unqualified to serve in the Legislature.
De Soto was arrested last week on charges that he has threatened the lives of other delegates. As our Brad McElhinny reported, “A criminal complaint specified that threats were made against House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and delegates Michael Hite, Pat McGeehan, Chuck Horst and Bill Ridenour. The complaint also described threats against delegates Wayne Clark and Joe Funkhouser.”

Those threats came after what has been described as a sometimes heated Republican caucus on Sunday December 8 in Charleston. Several House members raised questions about whether de Soto fabricated portions of his biography.
Several media outlets have fact-checked de Soto’s bio and documented significant discrepancies. Dragline, a media outlet supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, reported de Soto’s claims of experience as a medical doctor who provided free care to West Virginians, that he served as an Army Ranger medic and that he was a dean at a university “range from misleading to outright false.”
Several fellow Republicans questioned his fitness to serve and, according to the criminal complaint, they took a straw vote not to seat him. De Soto tried to explain the discrepancies, but he also became angry. The threats followed.
The complaint states that de Soto sent emails saying he was upset with eastern panhandle delegates and that he “had a vision to destroy them from the angel Moroni… I will send them there as commanded.”*
De Soto was arrested last Thursday on the charge of threatening terrorist acts and at last check was being held in the Eastern Regional Jail in lieu of $300,000 bond. Oh, by the way, just in the last few days De Soto has also switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
The fact that he is behind bars, at least for now, should make the threatened lawmakers feel a little safer. In the meantime, however, there is the issue of his election. If all or even some of the allegations are correct, de Soto is not fit to serve.
The House of Delegates will have a number of difficult votes to make in the upcoming session, but this is an easy vote: Do not seat him.
*(According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “In 1823 an angel named Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and told him of the existence of an ancient record engraved on plates, buried in a hill near his home.”)