Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is apparently even more confident that ex-President Donald Trump will be let off the hook in his second Senate impeachment trial even after the House impeachment managers on Wednesday unveiled disturbing new videos of the deadly Capitol insurrection that Trump provoked on January 6.
“The ‘Not Guilty’ vote is growing after today,” Graham, one of Trump’s most devoted foot soldiers in Congress, tweeted on Wednesday night. “I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House Managers offensive and absurd.”
During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that same night, the GOP senator claimed the Democrats’ push for convicting Trump for inciting the attack “is collapsing before their eyes.”
“So it’ll be over by Sunday, I hope, for the good of the country,” he added.
Graham also tried to “bothsides” the pro-Trump violence that was on full display in the previously unseen surveillance camera footage of the siege.
“We all know what happened in the Capitol was terrible. I hope everybody involved that broke in the Capitol goes to jail,” he said. “But I don’t remember any of these House managers saying a damn thing when they were trying to break into my house and going after Susan Collins and spitting on all of us.”
Graham was likely referring to the demonstration outside his home in September that protested Republicans’ push to fill the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat before the 2020 election. There are no reports that the demonstrators were violent or attempted to break into his home.
It’s also unclear what the senator meant with his comment about people “going after” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Convicting Trump would require 17 Republican senators to break from their party and join their 50 Democratic colleagues in the trial’s final vote.
