In a few days, Donald Trump will become the first President in United States history to ever face a second impeachment trial for what the Democrats are calling an “incitement to insurrection”, due to his remarks on January 6th.
There are plenty of reasons why this moment, one being the fact that Donald Trump isn’t even President anymore. This fact has many, including Senators Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, believing that the entire trial could itself be unconstitutional on that basis alone.
Graham is particularly vexed about it.
From a recent appearance on Fox News:
“The bottom line is, I believe an impeachment of the president out of office is unconstitutional,” he said. “I don’t believe the speech given by the president fits the incitement statute. That is not a crime. And there’s mounting evidence that the people came to Washington preplanned the attack before the president ever spoke. So I’m confident of the outcome here that we’re going to have more than 45 votes for a motion to dismiss on the idea that this is unconstitutional impeachment pursuing somebody out of office. I think the acquittal number will be pretty close. It will be in the high 40s.”
“But the question is, Trey, how did this trial end?” Graham continued. “If the House managers want to use this as a political commercial against Donald Trump and the Republicans, and they want to call witnesses now they didn’t call during the impeachment process in the House, this thing could go for weeks or months, and that would be bad for the country. So, to my Democratic colleagues, if you vote to call one witness, none were called in the House, get ready for a long trial.”
Graham has been a bit wishy-washy when it comes to his feelings on Donald Trump, having all but abandoned the Commander in Chief just hours after the attempted insurrectionists laid siege to the Capitol, demanding the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence.
