- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer in a letter on Sunday to hold a Senate vote to reject President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
- Graham, a close ally of the president, briefly broke with the president after the January 6 uprising, but has since defended him.
- In the letter to Schumer, Graham argued that if the trial is not over, “we will be delaying the healing of this great nation indefinitely, if not forever.”
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Senator Lindsey Graham asked Senator Chuck Schumer in a letter on Sunday to hold a Senate vote rejecting President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
“The Senate must vote to reject the impeachment article once it is received in the Senate,” Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said in the letter. “We will be delaying the healing of this great nation indefinitely, if not forever, if we do otherwise.”
Trump was accused by the House of Representatives last week for “inciting insurrection” over his role in the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol, when his supporters tried to prevent certification of the 2020 election results. Five people died.
The Senate must hold a judgment and vote on the president’s conviction. Current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the trial is unlikely to begin before Induction Day, when Schumer, a Democrat from New York, will be the new majority leader.
Read More: Mitch McConnell is telling Republican senators that his decision to condemn Trump in the impeachment trial is a ‘vote of conscience’
Graham, a frequent ally of the president, briefly broke with Trump after the siege of the Capitol and acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden had won the election.
However, in the letter to Schumer, he argued that the impeachment was “unconstitutional” because Trump would already be out of office when the trial begins.
He also praised Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to heed calls, including from the president, to break the constitution by trying to overturn the election results. Graham compared this decision to Schumer’s.
“But now, in your first act as Majority Leader, instead of starting the national cure that the country is so looking forward to, you seek revenge and political retaliation,” he said.
Graham also said that Senate Republicans “rejected unconstitutional actions” in relation to electoral certification.
“Virtually all of us reject new challenges for the 2020 elections,” he said.
However, in the days before certification, about a dozen Republican senators said they would oppose certifying some votes from the electoral college, with some just reversing the course after the violence on Capitol Hill had already occurred.
Eight of them ended up opposing, including Sens. Josh Hawley from Missouri and Ted Cruz from Texas.
Graham himself also pressured Georgia’s top election official to reject mostly Democratic ballots.
Days before the letter to Schumer, Graham spoke out against the impeachment and hinted that McConnell, who said he will wait to hear the evidence presented at the trial, is “making the problem worse.”