Faced with another wasteful impeachment trial, 65-year-old Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) urged 74-year-old President Donald Trump to not pardon any of the hoodlums associated with the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot. Breaking-and-entering into the Capitol for the purpose of disrupting a joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote confirming 78-year-old Joe Biden as president, the thugs and petty criminals deserve no mercy. Graham urged Trump to not pardon any of the lawbreakers, letting the criminal justice system give them what they deserve. “Mr. Presidnt, your policies will stand the test of time. You’re the most important figure in the Republican Party. You can shape the direction of the party. Keep your movement alive,” Graham told Fox News. Graham was worried about reports that Trump could pardon some of his reckless lawbreakers that forced their way into the Capitol.
On his way out of the White House, Trump has much on his mind, including mounting debt and ongoing New York State investigations into his finances. U.S. Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. continues his criminal probe into the Trump Organization, accusing Trump’s family business of tax evasion and money laundering, among other things. Graham turned from one of Trump biggest critics in 2016 into his biggest fan on Capitol Hill. Conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), doubted Trump’s conservative credentials but wound up admiring his domestic and foreign policies. President-elect Joe Biden plans an immediate assault on most of Trump domestic and foreign policy accomplishments. Biden’s team looks poised to re-enter the Paris Climate Accord, Iranian Nuke Deal, end border wall construction and reverse Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that boosted Wall Street and the economy.
Graham wants Trump, beyond anything else, to get his due in U.S. history, someone that pulled off the near-impossible of four Mideast peace deals with Israel. No other U.S. president has done for Mideast peace what Trump did his final year in office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Califl.) is hell-bent on destroying Trump legacy with her second impeachment. When the impeachment moves to the Senate for trial, hopefully Graham can helps coalesce Trump’s support among Republicans to beat back a conviction. Newly minted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), fresh off two Senate wins in Georgia, is pushing hard to get Trump convicted. It doesn’t matter to Pelosi and Schumer whether Trump committed “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors,” what matters is preventing him from running for public office again. Democrats have two motives: (1) destroy Trump’s legacy and (2) ban him from public office.
Graham wants Trump to think twice before pardoning any of the right-wing nut jobs that breached the Capitol and defaced public property. “I don’t care if you went there and spread flowers on the floor, you breached the security of the Capitol, you interrupted a joint session of Congress, you tried to intimidate us all, you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and to seek a pardon of these people would be wrong. I think it would destroy President Trump’s and I hope we don’t go down that road,” Graham said. But Graham doesn’t have to worry about pardons of Capitol Hill lawbreakers. It’s more fake news the same bogus stories that had Trump firing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller everyday on the nightly news. Graham’s too inside the Washington bubble to know that Trump would never stoop that low to pardon any criminals associated with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Pelosi clearly couched the Jan. 6 riot as an “insurrection,” to invoke her phony impeachment article. Insurrections don’t happen without armed groups taking up arms against the government. That didn’t happened Jan. 6. What happened were angry Trump supporters going over the deep end, engaging in criminal behavior at the expense of Trump’s claims of election fraud. Unlike Pelosi, who insists Trump tried with his mob to overthrow the U.S. government, Graham believes Trump is not responsible for the actions of a small fraction of his Jan. 6 crowd. “President Trump never said, ‘Go into the Capitol and try to interrupt a joint session of Congress.’ That was the choice they made and they need to live with that choice,” Graham said, reminding Democrats that Trump’s not responsible for crowd violence. Graham reminds Pelosi that nothing Trump said on Jan. 6 encouraged any supporter to storm the Capitol.
Graham will work in overdrive to convince fellow Republicans in the Judiciary Committee to reject Pelosi’s article of impeachment, accusing Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” Everyone knows that an angry mob rioted Jan. 6, not an attempted coup d’etat. Yet Pelosi and Schumer continue to weaponize their Article 1 power, pushing for another impeachment over pure vindictiveness. “It’s now time to move on,” Graham told Fox News, saying he will do anything he can to defeat the angry Democrat mob in the House. Democrats tried but failed to get 61-year-old Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from Office. Like Pelosi’s impeachment efforts, it’s entirely unconstitutional to remove Trump from office when he’s committed no crime or is not incapacitated, required by the 25th Amendment. Graham looks ready to take on House Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
