McConnell: Trump ‘morally responsible’ for attack

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell excoriated Donald Trump on Saturday for being “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and suggested he could face future criminal liability, but said he voted to acquit him at the impeachment trial because lawmakers had no jurisdiction over a former president.

Washington’s most powerful Republican used his strongest language to date to denounce Trump minutes after the Senate acquitted the former president, voting 57-43 to convict him but falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to find him guilty. Seven Republicans voted to convict.

Clearly angry, the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader said Trump’s actions surrounding the attack on Congress were “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He even noted that though Trump is now out of office, he remains subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.

“He didn’t get away with anything yet,” said McConnell, who turns 79 next Saturday and has led the Senate GOP since 2007.

It was a stunningly bitter castigation of Trump by McConnell, who could have used much of the same speech had he instead decided to convict him. Had McConnell voted to find Trump guilty, he has enough respect among his colleagues that many more of them may well have done the same.

By voting for acquittal, McConnell and his fellow Republicans left the party locked in its struggle to define itself in the post-Trump presidency. Numerous, fiercely loyal proTrump Republicans and more traditional Republicans who believe the former president is damaging the party’s national appeal are struggling to decide its direction.

A guilty vote by McConnell would have likely roiled GOP waters by signaling an attempt to yank the party away from Trump.

After Saturday’s vote, furious Democrats launched their own attacks against McConnell and the GOP. Speaking to reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., mocked the “cowardly group of Republicans” in the Senate she said were afraid to “respect the institution in which they served.”

She also said McConnell had created a self-fulfilling prophecy, forcing the Senate trial to begin after Trump left the White House by keeping the chamber out of session. Republicans say Pelosi could have triggered the proceedings earlier by delivering official impeachment documents sooner.

McConnell had signaled last month that he was open to finding Trump guilty, which in itself was an eyeopening signal of his alienation from the former president. He informed GOP senators how he would vote in a private email early Saturday, saying, “While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction.”

He expanded on his rationale on the Senate floor after Saturday’s roll call, making clear his enmity toward Trump’s actions.

“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,“he said.