Lindsey Graham: House Impeachment Managers’ Argument Was ‘Offensive’, ‘Absurd’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News’ Hannity on Wednesday that House impeachment managers had grown the “not guilty” vote in the Senate that day with an “absurd” presentation that floated a conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump planned the Capitol riot.

Graham told Hannity that Democrats had rushed to impeach Trump before investigating. Now that their “incitement” claim was falling apart, he said, they had to invent a “cockamamie” theory:

Let me tell your viewers: the “not guilty” vote is growing after today. I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House managers offensive and absurd. We all know what happened at the Capitol was terrible. I hope everybody involved that broke into the Capitol goes to jail. But I don’t remember any of the House managers saying a damn thing when they were trying to break into my house and going after [Republican Senator] Susan Collins [of Maine] and spitting on all of us. If this is a problem for a politician to give the speech that President Trump did, well, then [Vice President] Kamala Harris has a real problem, because she actively engaged in bailing out rioters. And here is what I would suggest. if you are a politician trying to raise bail for people accused of rioting, you are inciting more riots. But here’s something that nobody talked about that is important. If there was preplanning, there was no incitement. … The managers have got this cockamamie idea absurd theory that Donald Trump wa monitoring the Proud Boys’ website, and other far right websites, and that he and [former White House social media manager] Dan Scavino knew this was going to happen and they encouraged it. That is Looney Tunes. And you know why they are saying that? Because if the president didn’t know, and it was actually preplanned, he is not guilty. So for the first time today, they are trying to create a storyline that Donald Trump was in on it before it happened, that he was monitoring the proud boys and other crazy websites and he knew they were come to Washington with violence on their mind, and he encouraged it. That beyond bizarre. This is not evidence. This is a liberal democratic novel being presented as evidence.

Graham added that he wanted to know what Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knew about the imminent violence, if law enforcement had been aware of the possibility before January 6.

“This is why you don’t want to have snap impeachments,” Graham concluded. “Evidence really does matter.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.