Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham was back in the running for the former president’s most vocal cheerleader in the Senate this week after he warned a CNN reporter that the GOP would revolt if Donald Trump were to face a third criminal indictment relating to January 6.
The South Carolina Republican, who actually made a show of publicly breaking with Mr Trump in the hours after the attack on the Capitol only to glom back onto the bandwagon when things cooled down, spoke in the halls of Congress this week after the former president was formally arraigned in a Miami courtroom for the alleged illegal retention of presidential records and classified documents.
Mr Graham told CNN’s Manu Raju that “[i]f the special counsel indicts President Trump in Washington DC for anything related to January 6th, that will be considered a major outrage by Republicans because you could convict any Republican of anything in Washington DC.”
It was a warning that served to outline the GOP’s commitment to pushing (without a shred of evidence) the idea that the Justice Department has been politically weaponised by Democrats against Republicans, a charge fiercely denied by the agency’s leadership itself and contradicted by the public actions of President Joe Biden, who has categorically refused to comment on active investigations and maintained that he refuses to be briefed on them as well.
Mr Trump actually faces two separate criminal investigations stemming from his efforts to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election. One, headed by Jack Smith, is being run out of Washington DC, where thousands of his supporters attacked the US Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying his election defeat. Another is being headed up by District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County, Georgia, where investigators are looking into the president’s efforts to change the results of Georgia’s presidential election vote.
Even as the GOP wrestles with their own who contend that the January 6 attack was not a serious incident, and that the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and various lawmakers on Capitol Hill were not in danger, Mr Graham is faced with accusations himself of refusing to support any effort to hold Mr Trump accountable for his very public actions due to fear of upsetting the Republican base in his state. This interview is likely to deepen those charges, given that Mr Graham himself was reported by The Washington Post to have attempted to order Capitol Police officers to open fire with lethal rounds on rioters during the attack.
The senator saw those accusations voiced over the weekend by former CIA director James Clapper, who called him a “spineless coward”.
“It makes me angry when I hear people like Lindsey Graham make excuses and apologies for Donald Trump,” Mr Brennan said during an appearance on MSNBC. “Those are the words of a spineless coward, quite frankly, who is frightened by Donald Trump and is frightened by those individuals who still cling to an image of Donald Trump as being this very strong leader, which he is not.”
The former president was arraigned on Tuesday in the probe into his handling of classified materials on violations of the Espionage Act and witness tampering, among other crimes. He is separately accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York.
