Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy said Wednesday that although Trump’s actions were impeachable, the House Democrats’ article of impeachment is “flawed.”
“The president of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct, pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the Constitution to count the electors,” Roy said.
“His open and public pressure courageously rejected by the vice president purposefully seated the false belief among the president’s supporters, including those assembled on Jan. 6, that there was a legal path to the president,” he continued.
“It was foreseeable and reckless to sow such false belief that could lead to violence and rioting by loyal supporters whipped into a frenzy.”
Rioters breached the Capitol building last week during a protest that turned into a deadly riot against the Electoral College’s certification of the presidential election results, multiple sources said. The House voted to impeach Trump with an article of “incitement of insurrection.” (RELATED: Democratic NY Rep Adriano Espaillat Accuses Trump Of Sending ‘A Mob’ To Assassinate Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi)
Democratic Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland headed the impeachment charge and 10 Republicans cast their votes for impeaching Trump. The vote was 232-197.
Roy said the impeachment articles that House Democrats came up with paid particular attention to “the legal terms of incitement and insurrection,” making Roy think the articles “are flawed and unsupportable.”
“Even though impeachment does not require meeting a certain legal standard that danger for open speech and debate in this body and for the Republic is high if the House approves the articles as written,” Roy said.
“The language will be used to target members of this body under section 3 of the 14th amendment,” Roy said. “We must end tearing apart our nation by social media and sound bites.”
Roy and Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Republican Utah Rep. John Curtis denounced Trump “for the words and actions which contributed to these events” and urged their Congressional colleagues to do so also, according to a Tuesday statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The four representatives called what Trump did “reckless.”
“No President should ever, among other things, promote clearly unconstitutional theories that risk the stability of our nation and, in particular, do so to the detriment of the peaceful transition of power,” the statement said.
“Unfortunately, rather than conducting a sober review of the facts through hearings and establishing the legal standards under which we would review all that transpired, our democrat colleagues are rushing impeachment articles through the House of Representatives and beginning to target members of Congress as well with threats of blanket censure, devoid of specific examples of individual members’ actions,” the statement said.
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