As former President Donald Trump prepares to face his second Senate impeachment trial — this time for “inciting an insurrection” — a number of Republican senators are taking issue with the precedent that Democrats are establishing for kicking off impeachments.
According to the Washington Examiner, Sen. Rand Paul said over the weekend that if we’re going to start impeaching politicians for using excited rhetoric to hype up their supporters, a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, should be on the list of politicians to impeach.
“I think if we are going to criminalize speech and somehow impeach everybody who says, oh, go fight to hear your voices heard, really we ought to impeach Chuck Schumer then,” Paul said during a weekend Fox News interview with Chris Wallace.
He then provided an example of how Schumer’s past words fit the same criteria used to impeach Mr. Trump.
“He went to the Supreme Court, stood in front of the Supreme Court and said specifically, hey [Justice Neil] Gorsuch, hey [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh, you’ve unleashed a whirlwind, and you’re going to pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you continue with these awful decisions,” Paul explained.
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Paul went on to remind Wallace that Schumer’s rhetoric at the time was so distasteful and dangerous that it prompted an exceedingly rare public statement from Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who condemned the Senate Leader for his violent call-to-action.
“This inflammatory wording, this violent rhetoric of Chuck Schumer was so bad that the chief justice, who rarely says anything publicly, immediately said this kind of language is dangerous as a mob tried to invade the Supreme Court,” Paul said.
Paul then drove home the point that there can’t be a double standard of simply impeaching people that one political party doesn’t like, rather, all politicians who make such inflammatory remarks should be held to the same ridiculous standard.
“So if people want to hold President Trump accountable for language, there has to be a consistent standard, and to my mind, it’s a partisan farce because they’re not doing anything to Chuck Schumer, not doing anything to Rep. Omar, not doing anything to Maxine Waters. It’s just not fair. It’s just partisan politics under a different name,” Paul added.
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The Republican senator then told Wallace that the examples he provided of Democrats using violent rhetoric — and the list of examples is huge — is exactly what Trump’s lawyers will use as part of their defense in Trump’s impeachment trial, pointing out a clear double standard that will further cripple the Democrats’ ability to secure a conviction.
“However, I think you’re going to see the Trump defense play video of Maxine Waters telling crowds to mob Trump administration and restaurants and attack them. They’ll probably show clips of Cory Booker saying, get up in their face of these Congresspeople,” Paul said.
Trump’s impeachment is set to begin on Tuesday, February 9.
ARTICLE SOURCE: thefederalistpapers.org
