Lisa Murkowski Shreds Trump In Defense of Vote to Convict: If His Actions Aren’t Impeachable, ‘I Cannot Imagine What Is’
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Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) released a blistering statement condemning Donald Trump and defending her vote to impeach the former president for incitement of insurrection.
Trump was acquitted over incitement to insurrection when the Senate failed to reach the supermajority of votes necessary to convict him for riling up his violent supporters to storm the Capitol. The 57-43 vote was the most bipartisan impeachment trial vote in U.S. history however, for Murkowski and 6 of her Republican colleagues broke with their party and sided with Democrats in declaring Trump guilty.
On Sunday, Murkowski’s office released a statement saying that between Trump’s actions and his conduct after losing the 2020 election, “the facts make clear that the violence and desecration of the Capitol that we saw on January 6 was not a spontaneous uprising.”
From the statement:
President Trump did everything in his power to stay in power. When the court challenges failed, he turned up the pressure on state officials and his own Department of Justice. And when these efforts failed, he turned to his supporters. He urged his supporters to come to Washington, D.C. on January 6 to ‘Stop the Steal’ of an election that had not been stolen. The speech he gave on that day was intended to stoke passions in a crowd that the President had been rallying for months. They were prepared to march on the Capitol and he gave them explicit instructions to do so.
Murkowski’s statement continues to bash Trump for how he “endorsed the actions of the mob,” allowed their violence to go on for hours, and acted with the primary interest of retaining his own political power. It concludes with her judgment that Trump’s actions (or lack thereof) on January 6th constituted a failure by the ex-president to uphold the Oath of Office.
“If months of lies, organizing a rally of supporters in an effort to thwart the work of Congress, encouraging a crowd to march on the Capitol, and then taking no meaningful action to stop the violence once it began is not worthy of impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from holding office in the United States, I cannot imagine what is,” Murkowski states. “One positive outcome of the horrible events on January 6, was that hours after the Capitol was secured, on January 7, at 4:00 a.m., Congress fulfilled our responsibility to the U.S. Constitution and certified the Electoral College results. We were able to do that because of brave men and women who fulfilled their oath to protect and defend Congress. I regret that Donald Trump was not one of them.”
