Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is defending his acquittal vote for Donald Trump on Saturday which came just before he gave an impassioned speech denouncing the former President and drawing a clear line between Trump and the January 6th rioters. Democrats are not accepting McConnell’s continued claim that an impeachment trial for a departed President is not constitutional. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others cited that McConnell, as Senate Majority leader in Trump’s last days in office, refused to allow the Senate to take up the impeachment trial after the House voted. She said, “It was not the reason that he voted the way he did. It was the excuse that he used.” In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday McConnell continued an ardent defense of his acquittal vote saying, “the Senate’s ‘sole power to try all impeachments’ would constitute an unlimited circular logic with no stopping point at former officers.” But critics have pointed out that Trump was in office when he committed the crimes he has been accused of and was also impeached by the House while in office. The Senate then voted that it was indeed constitutional to try the President after he left office because not doing so would amount to a “January exception” for future presidents who might consider breaking the law just before leaving office. The final Senate vote tally of 57 to 43 to convict Trump fell 10 votes short of the margin needed for conviction but almost reflected the public’s sentiment. About 58% of Americans surveyed think that Trump should have been convicted. Meanwhile Speaker Pelosi has said there will be a 9/11-style commission to investigate the January 6th Capitol riot. 

House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi has just filed the first of what is expected to be a wave of lawsuits against Trump over his incitement of violence. Meanwhile those Republican lawmakers who dared to vote against Trump in the House and Senate are facing censure in their home districts, including Representative Adam Kinzinger, Senators Pat Toomey, Richard Burr, Mitt Romney, and Susan Collins. Trump loyalists like Senator Ron Johnson are going as far as saying the January 6th riot was not really a big deal. Johnson said, “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.” 

Trump lawyer Michael Van Der Veen meanwhile has now claimed that House impeachment managers “doctored