Sen. Whitehouse: Senate Ethics Committee to Investigate Coordination Between Trump and GOP Senators During Capitol Insurrection

As Democratic House Managers present a raft of compelling evidence to convict former President Donald Trump of inciting the deadly capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, another question looms over the Senate chamber: Were Republican Senators who amplified the lie of a “stolen election” and objecting to the Electoral College certification in any way complicit?

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) revealed on Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Wednesday evening that some members of the U.S. Senate were looking to answer that question in a manner that could raise a stink that could cover Republican Senators Josh Hawley (MO) and Ted Cruz (TX), both of whom were vocal proponents of objecting to the free and fair election results that led to President Joe Biden taking office.

Host Lawrence O’Donnell noted that it “seems Donald Trump was educating his crowds about who was on their side and who wasn’t,” adding that Ted Cruz played an active role campaigning in Georgia and trying to delay the Electoral College certification.

“Did you have a feeling that there were some Republican members of the Senate, highly recognizable like Senator Cruz, possibly Senator Hawley .. who are sitting there in the senate, never having felt threatened by this crowd at all, at any moment, because they knew, that that crowd knew, that they were on their side?” O’Donnell asked.

“Well, what I think of with them is, we’re still looking at what their role was in all of this,”  Whitehouse replied. “We’ve made the referral to the ethics commission, ethics committee. The ethics committee will have its look.”

“But when you look at the evidence today about the president’s call to Senator Tuberville, asking him to delay the proceedings, to add objections, to spread it out, you could see that it’s like a pincer move,” Whitehouse continued.

He then explained how, “on one hand you’re getting your mob up to the capital, to do this damage and disrupt the counting of electoral votes, but at the same time you’ve got to open the window of time during which those electoral votes are counted in order to allow the mob to have its effect, to actually do the damage, to perhaps catch someone, but at a minimum to be able to disrupt. ”

“If this thing had gone smoothly and orderly, without objection, we might have been done by the time the mob had reached the capital,” he continued. “So there’s a possibility of there having been some connivance between those who tried to create the delay and that being used open a window long enough that the mob could fight its way in, and disrupt the count.”

Whitehouse concluded, “So, all of that remains to be seen, but it struck me that when the president called Senator Tuberville for that specific purpose, that could easily have en a similar call to another colleague.”

Watch above via MSNBC.