WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday ripped the impeachment of former President Donald Trump over the Capitol riot, calling the proceedings against his fellow Republican “awfully vindictive,” “completely unnecessary” and “ill-advised.”
“This is really a political exercise,” Cornyn told Mark Davis, a conservative talk show host on 660-AM “The Answer” in Dallas, just hours before the Senate began the impeachment trial. “This isn’t a constitutional exercise.”
Cornyn has long been skeptical of the impeachment effort, which accuses Trump of having incited an insurrection by urging his followers to march on the Capitol last month.
But Cornyn had also previously said Trump’s words and actions leading up to the Capitol attack were “reckless and wrong.” He didn’t reiterate those criticisms to Davis on Tuesday when pressed, instead saying that Trump “underestimated the volatility of the situation.”
The senator cast the largest blame for the riot on law enforcement leaders, including former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned in the wake of the attack.
“If adequate security had been provided, these folks would’ve been stopped at the perimeter and would’ve never come into the building,” Cornyn said. “And none of this would’ve happened.”
Cornyn also defended many of the Trump supporters who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the insurrection.
“We’re now learning that there had been people infiltrating this otherwise peaceful group of protesters,” he said. “I don’t believe the people who gathered there ... had any intent of committing any violence, or looting or trespassing in the Capitol.”
Some militia-style groups did plan on storming the Capitol in advance, according to court documents. Many others involved in the riot were not involved in those groups, and some of those arrested in the attack have specifically cited Trump’s words as a motivating factor.
Sen. John Cornyn: "President Trump's words and actions leading up to the attack were reckless and wrong. But as we all know, the constitutional standard for impeachment isn't recklessness." pic.twitter.com/fC8uWmwAfd
— The Hill (@thehill) February 8, 2021
Democrats have pinned the violent mob squarely on Trump.
“This was the president inciting fellow Americans to carry out an insurrection,” San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro, one of the House’s impeachment managers, recently said. “And the country lived through it. Not just the people in the Capitol that day — the whole nation.”
But Cornyn said on Tuesday that “I don’t think you can impeach a president for constitutionally protected speech, which I believe this was.”
The senator, a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court judge, also blasted the way the impeachment process has unfolded, saying it “offends every sense of fairness and due process that I learned and applied in the courts of law in Texas.”
He cited the fact that a Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, is presiding over the trial, while also still voting on its outcome. He also questioned the constitutionality of holding an impeachment trial for a president who is no longer in office.
That last point was the trial’s focus on Tuesday, but Democrats have made clear their view that such a proceeding is constitutional.
“It would set a dangerous precedent to allow any president in the future to know that they get a free pass to try to incite an attempted coup in the last few weeks of their administration and that they become untouchable simply because they can run out the clock,” Castro said recently.
