Tuesday, in an appearance on FNC’s “Fox News Primetime,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reacted to the 55-45 vote in the U.S. Senate earlier in the day, which paved the way for former President Donald Trump’s impeachment to proceed on a constitutional basis.
Paul insisted the process was still unconstitutional and pointed out that Chief Justice John Roberts was a no-show. He said that given there were 45 votes against proceeding showed that impeachment was “dead on arrival.”
“We put forward a motion that said that basically, you can’t impeach a private individual. You can impeach a president, but this is why the chief justice didn’t show up. If it was the president, the chief justice shows up. The fact that the chief justice wouldn’t come and refused to come means that this is a private citizen, but the Constitution doesn’t allow for impeachment of a private citizen. So, we put this issue forward, but the most important takeaway from the issue is they don’t have the votes to convict. We have 45 people, 45 Republican senators say that the whole — the whole charade is unconstitutional.
So what does that mean? It means that impeachment — the trial is dead on arrival. There will be a show, there will be a parade of partisanship, but the Democrats really will not be able to win. They will be able to play a partisan game that they wish to play. But it’s all over. This shows they don’t have the votes to win. So, they will just slog through this, and they will try to punish Republicans. But that’s all this has ever been about. Not justice. It’s about a partisan game, where they don’t want the election to be over.
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