Sen. Rand Paul released a sharp attack on the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, in an op-ed entitled, “Boycott the Sham Impeachment,” in The Hill Jan. 24. Paul said that the first impeachment of Trump was wrongheaded but lawful; this one is a purely vindictive political exercise and has no constitutional basis.
The Senator, directly and personally able to comment on attacks on Congress by rioters, wrote, “But to argue that any politician that tells a crowd to ‘fight to take back your country’ is somehow guilty of incitement is absurd.
“If we are to blame politicians for the most violent acts of their craziest supporters, then many of my colleagues would face some pretty harsh charges themselves. I’ve been shot at, assaulted and harassed by supporters of the left, including some who directly said the words of politicians moved them to this violence.”
(During the Republican convention of 2020 Paul and his wife were attacked in a Washington street by a large group of Antifa or Black Lives Matter supporters — who shouted that they knew who he was — and had to be pulled away from the mob by a number of D.C. police and bodyguards.)
He goes on: “I was there at the ballfield when a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter almost killed [Rep.] Steve Scalise and seriously wounded several others. At the time, Democrats were arguing that the GOP plan for health care was `you get sick, then they let you die.’ Is it any wonder an insane left-wing gunman took that rhetoric to heart and concluded, `If the GOP is going to let me die, then maybe I’ll just kill them first'?”
Senator Paul concluded with the fact that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has said that he will not preside over this impeachment trial, because Trump has already left office. “That settles it for me,” he wrote, because the Chief Justice presiding is a requirement for impeachment in the Constitution.
In contrast, Mitt Romney on CNN on Sunday, Jan. 24 claimed that impeachment of Donald Trump after he’s left office is constitutional. Romney offered no reasoning, but said, “It’s pretty clear that the effort is constitutional. I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?” There appear to be at least six potential GOP Senate votes for conviction: Romney, Sasse, Murkowski, Collins, Toomey and McConnell.
