As the House of Representatives is currently voting on impeachment of President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told Senate Republicans Wednesday that he has “not made a final decision” on how he will vote.
“While the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate,” McConnell said in a memo to fellow Republicans.
Democratic Reps. Ted Lieu, David Cicilline, Jamie Raskin and Jerrold Nadler introduced the articles of impeachment against the President this week. They are charging Trump with violating his oath of office.
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The article reads: “In his conduct while President of the United States — and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”
The article alleges that during a speech to Trump supporters given just before the joint session of Congress was preparing to vote on certifying the electoral votes, the President “repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials.”
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The article in reference to Trump’s speech states the President “reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide,’ and “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in –lawless action at the Capitol.”
The article makes reference to Trump’s statement: “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
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“Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts,” the article states.
McConnell initially came out in favor of impeachment.
As reported by the New York times, “Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has told associates that he believes President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party, according to people familiar with his thinking.”
In the end, his statement may be mute as his office has stated the Senate will not hear impeachment proceedings until they reconvene January 19, one day prior to inauguration day.
U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will not use emergency powers to immediately reconvene the chamber this week as the House moves forward with its vote on President Donald Trump’s impeachment, his spokesman said in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.
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I’m told @senatemajldr will not consent to an emergency session of the Senate, making an impeachment trial unlikely this week.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 13, 2021
Sounds like McConnell is hedging his bets. We’ll see what actually happens.