Twice-failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday sharply criticized the 45 GOP senators who formally questioned the legitimacy of the forthcoming Senate impeachment trial, peddling the left-wing narrative that former President Trump actively “incited a violent mob to attack Congress” and concluding that the majority of GOP senators “voted for Trump to get away with it.”
“Three weeks ago, Donald Trump incited a violent mob to attack Congress and stop the peaceful transition of power,” Clinton said, placing the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer, on the former president.
“Yesterday, all but five GOP senators voted for Trump to get away with it,” she concluded:
Her remarks follow a Tuesday vote on Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) point of order on the constitutionality of the impeachment trial. The Kentucky lawmaker argued on the floor that the effort is wholly partisan in nature and “designed to further divide the country.”
“Democrats claim to want to unify the country, but impeaching a former president, a private citizen, is the antithesis of unity,” Paul told his colleagues, emphasizing that “brazenly appointing a pro-impeachment Democrat [Senate President Pro Tem Patrick Leahy] to preside over the trial is not fair or impartial, and hardly encourages any kind of unity in our country.”
“No, ‘unity’ is the opposite of this travesty we are about to witness,” he said.
“If the accused is no longer president, where is the constitutional power to impeach him? Private citizens don’t get impeached. Impeachment is for removal from office. And the accused here has already left office,” he added.
Only five GOP senators failed to side with Paul. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has not indicated how he would vote in the impeachment trial, sided with the majority of the GOP in questioning the legitimacy of impeachment.
“This ‘trial’ is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Paul concluded, as the Senate would need 67 votes to convict the former president:
Speaking from the Senate floor earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) revealed that his party’s focus largely remains on preventing Trump from being eligible to run for office again.
“Let me be clear: There will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate. There will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. If the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him again,” Schumer said.