Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Wednesday night that the number of “innocent” votes in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is “growing.” Graham’s comments came hours after the House of Democrats’ impeachment managers showed explicit, never-before-seen video footage of the violent riot that broke out on the US Capitol on January 6.
“The vote for ‘Not Guilty’ is growing after today,” Graham wrote in a tweet on Wednesday night. “I think most Republicans found the presentation by House officials offensive and absurd.”
“We all know that what happened on Capitol was terrible. I hope that everyone involved who broke into Capitol goes to jail,” added the senator in a Fox News appearance ‘ Hannity.
During the program, Graham and host Sean Hannity argued that previous statements made by Democratic politicians in support of racial justice and Black Lives Matter protesters during the 2020 national uprisings against police brutality were themselves incitements to rebellion, exactly what Democrats accused Trump of.
Graham called Democrats hypocrites for not speaking out against activists who demonstrated outside his home in September 2020 and outside Susan Collins’s home in December 2017 and October 2018, comparing his actions with those of insurrectionists.
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Graham also told Hannity that he was not convinced of the arguments put forward by the managers of Trump’s ties to the Proud Boys, a group that describes itself as a “chauvinist machista” that the FBI described as “a right-wing extremist group”. Trump told the group, infamously, to “step back and wait” during a 2020 presidential debate in September, when asked to denounce white supremacy.
Democrats highlighted the role that the Proud Boys played during the insurrection. At least seven Proud Boys have been accused of participating in the January 6 riots so far. But Graham criticized the alleged connection. At least one Proud Boy who was arrested said he was acting under Trump’s orders.
“The managers had this absurd idea, an absurd theory that Donald Trump was monitoring the Proud Boys website and other far-right websites and he and [former White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Dan Scavino knew this was going to happen and they encouraged it. That’s Looney Tunes, “said Graham.
Graham also said that Democrats’ beliefs that Trump sparked the uprising with his January 6 speech and that the uprising had been organized for weeks before it occurred were contradictory.
Trump’s re-election campaign paid more than $ 2.7 million to several individuals and companies who helped organize the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the January 6 violent uprising, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But Graham, Hannity and Trump’s impeachment lawyers remain unmoved by Democratic attempts to connect Trump’s public statements to inciting a riot, even with the new video of the riots.
“I didn’t discover anything I didn’t already know,” Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor told reporters on Wednesday after seeing the new images. “We know that a crowd broke into the Capitol and caused damage to the building. I am waiting for them to connect this to President Trump, and so far this has not happened.”
Newsweek contacted Graham’s office for comment.