GOP Sen. Toomey Pushes Back on Colleagues’ Attempts to Dismiss Trump Trial Out of Hand: ‘It’s Clearly Constitutional’

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) offered a frank assessment of how Donald Trump’s impeachment is likely to go when the Senate begins the trial on the former president’s incitement of insurrection.

In a broad-range interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Toomey was asked whether he intends to hold Trump accountable for egging on his supporters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unlawful attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Tapper also asked Toomey whether he sees any real possibility that the Senate will see enough votes to successfully impeach Trump.

Toomey answered by rejecting the argument many his GOP colleagues have put forward: that it is unconstitutional to impeach Trump now that he’s out of office (even though the proceedings against him began while he was still president). However, he prefaced this by saying conviction is “very unlikely,” judging by the layout of the Senate’s previous vote on whether to dismiss the trial on procedural grounds.

“You did have 45 Republican senators vote to suggest that they didn’t think it was appropriate to conduct a trial, so you can infer how likely it is that those folks will vote to convict. I disagreed with their assessment. I think it is Constitutional. I think it’s clearly Constitutional to conduct a Senate trial with respect to an impeachment. In this case the impeachment occurred prior to the president leaving office. My job will be to listen to both sides of this, evaluate the arguments and make a decision.”

Watch above, via CNN.