Graham to Pelosi: ‘How Could an Unarmed Mob, 20 Years After 9/11, Occupy the House and the Senate?’

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) discussed Democrats’ effort to impeach President Donald Trump following the Capitol Hill riots.

Graham said he thought the impeachment charges should be immediately dismissed but raised the question as to how under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) could an “unarmed mob” occupy the U.S. Capitol.

Partial transcript as follows:

JOHN ROBERTS: Obviously, Senator, what happened there in the Capitol building on January 6 was horrific. But now we’ve moved on to a new administration, to go back and try to have a trial in the Senate purely for the reasons of making sure that President Trump can’t run again for federal office, is — is that worth potentially jeopardizing this grand unity that President Biden is trying to achieve, or at least says he’s trying to?

GRAHAM: Well, that’d be up to Nancy Pelosi. If she sends the articles over, under the law as it exists today, the Senate will drop everything and will move to a court of impeachment. And my hope is that we will do this quickly if the articles come over.

It shouldn’t be drug out. There’s not a whole lot of facts to be discussed. You know what happened, you can make up your own mind. I think the unconstitutional argument is persuasive. I’m hoping a Democrat or two will believe that impeaching a president out office is bad for the presidency, bad for the country as a whole.

So my hope is that, if we do get the articles of impeachment, that we move forward quickly. We’re not going to do two things at once, we’re not going to enact the Biden agenda in the morning and impeach President Trump in the afternoon.

If the articles come to the Senate, we will focus on them exclusively. I look forward to making the argument this is unconstitutional, and we’ll see what happens.

SANDRA SMITH: Real — real quick follow up on that, Senator. Do you mean no witnesses, no evidence, do you mean that quickly?

GRAHAM: That’ll be up to the presenters. If I’m the Trump team, I don’t know if you need any witnesses here.

My belief is that what the president said at the rally is not incitement under the law, that the people who defiled the Capitol made a conscious choice to do so. They should be held accountable.

And the question that needs to be asked of Speaker Pelosi, regardless of the reason people came to the Capitol, how could an unarmed mob, 20 years after 9/11, occupy the House and the Senate? That to me needs to be talked about a lot, not just during impeachment, but afterwards.

How could it be, 20 years after 9/11, a group of unarmed people could literally take over the Capitol during a joint session of Congress? I’d like to see what she says about that.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor