After Donald Trump’s second trial in the House of Representatives, Mitch McConnell asked his Senate colleagues to “vote on their conscience” as the Senate decides whether to indict the president for his role in inciting a deadly Capitol revolt, full of false claims from voters. A widespread fraud and lie that the 2020 elections were “stolen” from his supporters.
The Senate Majority Leader, who oversees the remaining days of the Republican-controlled Senate as the balance of power in the newly elected Congress shifts, has not indicated how his colleagues are expected to vote on, and the impeachment trial will not reach the Senate hall until Joe Biden He is the boss. But he told senators that their votes at the trial belonged only to them, according to News agency.
In a statement released on January 13, Senator McConnell said he believed he “serves our nation best” to abstain from the impeachment trial until after Biden’s inauguration. Until then, he said, Congress should focus on “facilitating a secure installation and an orderly transfer of power.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic senators have urged the majority leader to move quickly and set a date for the trial, hoping that he will immediately pass through Congress the recently announced $ 1.9 trillion relief package for the president-elect for the president-elect.
On January 12, the House of Representatives voted No. 232-197 to dismiss the president on charges of incitement to revolt, “less than a week after a violent mob of supporters of the president violated the Capitol building, threatening lawmakers to hold a joint session of Congress to ratify the elections. At least five people, including a woman shot dead by Capitol Police, three rioters who died in a medical emergency, and a Capitol Police officer who succumbed to his wounds after being beaten.
As impeachment moves into the House of Representatives, at least four Republican lawmakers have indicated that they have either not decided or are considering a vote of conviction, including Senator McConnell as well as Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sassi and Pat Tommy.
In a damning statement on Friday, Senator Sassi said, “Angry hawkers will try to whitewash the attack on the Capitol, saying a few rotten apples are out of control. That is wrong.”
He said, “Every American needs to understand what the Justice Department has just announced: Investigators have strong evidence indicating that some of the rioters who stormed the United States Capitol had planned to kidnap and possibly assassinate the Vice President.” “These men were not drunk who became rioters – they were terrorists attacking the constitutional transfer of power.”
During the president’s first impeachment trial last year after the House of Representatives impeached him on charges of abusing power and obstructing Congress, Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator who defected from the Republican Party to vote guilty of one article of the impeachment measure.
In the president’s second trial in the House of Representatives, 10 Republican congressmen broke away from the party for an impeachment vote.
The impeachment trial will be the first for a president who is no longer in office.