Lindsey Graham threatens to drag out Trump’s trial if Democrats call witnesses
Sen. Lindsey Graham this week warned Democrats against calling any witnesses during former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
The U.S. House of Representatives in January voted to impeach Trump — who continuously made unfounded claims that the November presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from him — on accusations of inciting an insurrection in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Now, the Senate is set to hold a trial next week over whether to convict Trump on those charges. Conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds majority vote, meaning 17 Republicans would have to join all Democrats for the measure to pass.
During a Tuesday interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Graham threatened to drag that trial out if Senate Democrats call a single witness — and urged them to get the trial over “as quickly as possible.”
“If you want to call one witness, my friends, to my Democratic colleagues, you’re going to have a lot of witnesses,” the South Carolina Republican said on Fox News. “You’re going to stop the trial for weeks and months and for what purpose?”
He went on to warn he could shift the trial’s focus onto Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I can promise you this, Sean, if you’re going to pursue this, and you want to start calling witnesses, and you want to drag this thing out, it would be fair to have Kamala Harris’ tape played where she bailed people out of jail,” Graham told Hannity.
It’s unclear what tape Graham was referring to.
In June, before Harris was selected as President Joe Biden’s running mate, she tweeted a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” during the demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck in May, sparking an avalanche of protests across the nation against police brutality.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund is an organization that’s focused on inequities in the country’s cash bail system and helps pay criminal bail and immigration bonds for those who can’t afford it. A fact check from The Washington Post found donations didn’t just go toward helping protesters and that “few people involved in the protests needed MFF’s help to get out of jail.”
Graham, an ally of the former president, has previously warned Democrats against calling witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial.
On Monday, he told Fox News that calling one witness would “open up Pandora’s Box.”
“If you open that can of worms, we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people pre-planned this attack and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol,” he said, according to Fox.
The comments come as some Republican lawmakers have argued Trump’s impeachment trial is unconstitutional since he no longer holds office.
Last week, all but five Senate Republicans voted in favor of an effort led by Sen. Rand Paul to declare the upcoming trial unconstitutional — signaling that Trump’s conviction is unlikely.
Democrats, however, argue they have precedent to support trying former officeholders. No president has been tried by the Senate after leaving office, but the Senate tried Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 after he resigned.
Trump’s lawyers have pushed for the case to be dismissed, arguing “the 45th president cannot be removed from an office he no longer occupies” and the Senate doesn’t have the authority to prevent Trump from running again for federal office.
The Constitution grants the Senate the power to decide “whether the official shall be disqualified from again holding an office of public trust under the United States” following conviction.
Trump’s legal team has also indicated it will argue that the former president’s speech at a rally just before the attack on the Capitol — during which Trump urged his supporters to march on Capitol Hill — is protected by the First Amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that the amendment doesn’t apply to some speech that “may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 7:03 AM with the headline "Lindsey Graham threatens to drag out Trump’s trial if Democrats call witnesses."
