Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) threatened Vice President Kamala Harris with a possible impeachment trial in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”.
The interview, conducted a day after President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate in his second impeachment case, gave Graham the opportunity to attack the former California senator.
“If you use this model, I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if Republicans take over the House [in the 2022 midterm election], because she really saved the hooligans and one of the hooligans went back to the streets and broke someone’s head, “Graham said of the former California senator for Oakland.” So, we opened Pandora’s box here, and I’m sad for the country. “
Graham quote references a tweet that Harris sent on June 1st, asking followers to consider contributing to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund that helped protesters arrested during protests against George Floyd. There is no evidence that Harris herself posted someone’s bail.
Comparing Black Lives Matter’s protests to the attack on the US Capitol is a popular point of discussion on the right. The summer of protests against racial inequality and violent policing practices, especially against people of color, were largely non-violent; a 2020 Harvard study of more than 7,300 Black Lives Matter protests found that they were “overwhelmingly peaceful”.
“Only 3.7% of the protests involved property damage or vandalism. Part of them did not involve police or protesters, but people involved in vandalism or pillaging along with the protests, ”reported the study. “In short, our data suggest that 96.3% of the events did not involve material or police damages, and in 97.7% of the events, no injuries were reported among the participants, passers-by or police.”
In contrast, the riot at the United States Capitol, which was an attempt to overturn the results of an official election, claimed five lives and threatened the security of politicians on both the left and the right.
Graham also argued to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that Trump’s second impeachment trial was unconstitutional because he said Trump’s incentive to “fight like hell” is protected as freedom of speech.
“It sure looks like you’re saying he violated his oath of office,” Wallace said at one point.
“No, I think what he did was to encourage his supporters across the country to fight like hell to retake an election that he thought was stolen – many politicians said that,” said Graham.