- Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has been emailing senators to tell them that their decision to convict President Donald Trump during the impeachment trial will be a “vote of conscience,” said the Republican Party senator, Kevin Cramer, to Insider in an exclusive interview.
- Cramer said he did not want Trump to be impeached. But he is also unsure whether he wants the president to take federal office again after putting democracy at risk, he said.
- “Trump’s conviction may mean he doesn’t run again, but it doesn’t mean he gives up without a fight,” Cramer told Insider. “I don’t know if the impeachment sends a winning message to our base.”
- Cramer and others are commenting on a legal assessment by retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, saying the Senate cannot hold an impeachment trial after Trump leaves office.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is telling his Republican colleagues that they are free to vote any way they want during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after the goofy president incited a deadly riot on January 6 in US Capitol.
“His message to me was that it would clearly be a vote of conscience,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, told Insider. “He was always respectful to members that way.”
The Senate can begin the president’s trial as early as Wednesday, the same day as President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Under Senate rules, the upper house must prioritize Trump’s trial, once the House officially handed over its impeachment article accusing Trump of inciting troublemakers who invaded the Capitol. So far, that hasn’t happened, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday declined to say when Democrats planned to make the formal transfer.
Read More: Joe Biden is hiring about 4,000 political officials to work in his administration. See how three experts say you can increase your chances of getting one of these jobs.
In anticipation of the trial, Republican Party sources close to McConnell and the White House said earlier this week that the Kentucky Republican may vote to condemn Trump as a means of preventing him from serving in a federal position again. McConnell later told other senators that he had not made up his mind and wanted to hear the legal arguments before reaching any conclusions.
Cramer, a former House Republican and one of Trump’s first supporters in 2016 who accompanied him during his single term, said he did not want to vote to condemn Trump. But he said he may be open to voting in favor of barring Trump from serving in office again after last week’s attack.
Such a vote to definitively end Trump’s career in the federal government requires only a simple majority, but it would happen only if two-thirds of the Senate voted to condemn Trump. This has never occurred to a president in more than 230 years of United States history.
A rowdy man occupies the seat of the president of the Senate on January 6.
Win McNamee / Getty images
The Republican Party senator calls the riot ‘an attack’ on the republic
The domestic attack on the Capitol left lawmakers in both parties shaken before Biden took office, where some 20,000 National Guard soldiers set up camp in and around the country’s legislative seat.
“This is the representative republic in action, and it was an attack – it was an attack on the same day at work,” Cramer said in an interview on Thursday.
But the senator acknowledged that Republicans like him are also concerned about the reaction of Trump and his supporters as the impeachment trial approaches. Some Republican Party lawmakers faced death threats from Trump supporters and bought body armor for protection.
Now they are considering whether to condemn Trump would punish or strengthen him.
“Trump’s conviction may mean he doesn’t run again, but it doesn’t mean he gives up without a fight,” said Cramer. “All my Republican pro-Trump friends want to take my head off for not blowing up the Constitution.”
The House voted 232-197 on Wednesday for Trump’s impeachment for his role in inciting troublemakers to invade the Capitol, making him the only president to be impeached twice. All 222 Democrats and 10 House Republicans supported the impeachment.
Trump spokesmen did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday. A McConnell spokesman declined to comment on this story.
US Supreme Court President John Roberts presided over President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in early 2020. He will be back for the next one.
Senate Television via AP
Counting votes in the Senate
Senate Republicans have also been debating behind the scenes whether an impeachment trial is technically allowed, considering that Trump will no longer be in office after noon on January 20.
Moving between Republican Party offices is an argument made by J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals judge who wrote in The Washington Post this week that the Senate could not try an officer after he stepped down.
“That Senate trial would be unconstitutional,” said Luttig.
Luttig’s point of view is not disputed. Jeffrey Rosen, a constitutional scholar, said on Friday in the Politico’s Playbook newsletter that the discretion to carry out the trial rested solely with the Senate.
It is unclear how many Senate Republicans will end up on the side of Democrats if the Trump trial – which will have U.S. court president John Roberts in charge – reaches a final vote on sentencing or acquittal. Even the most moderate members of the House, like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, refuse to say how they will vote.
Cramer said he did not think 17 Republican senators would join all 50 Democrats to condemn Trump.
If this scenario materializes, Trump’s trial will end with the ex-president’s acquittal.
McConnell’s strategy of telling Republicans like Cramer that they are free to condemn Trump has sparked all kinds of speculation about what the Republican leader in the Senate is doing. Some sources said they thought he was giving the lame president a warning shot that the Republicans ended him in politics.
“They are free, like a bird,” a GOP source familiar with McConnell’s thought told Insider. “They don’t want him to run again. This is what McConnell is trying to figure out how to do.”