CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger suggested Monday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s (IG) investigation into 2020 election interference could be used to convict former President Donald Trump in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial.
Borger appeared on “CNN Newsroom” and was asked by host Brianna Keilar how the investigation into whether any DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to interfere with the election results might impact the impeachment trial.
“If people believe there was a crime committed that is an impeachable offense and they want people to vote to convict, they could say this is motive,” Borger responded. “They could say the president was plotting — it’s all too remarkable to even say because it sounds like a story — that the president was plotting with somebody inside the Justice Department to dethrone the acting attorney general so he could get the Justice Department to overturn the election in Georgia. It’s remarkable, but it does go to the motive of the president, saying, look, he was planning this insurrection in many different ways.”
Borger was referring to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as the “insurrection,” which followed a rally held by Trump where he called on his supporters to march to the Capitol and demand that a joint session of Congress overturn the Electoral College results. Trump was impeached Jan. 13 after being accused of inciting the mob.
It was announced on Monday that IG Michael Horowitz was opening the investigation after it was reported that a DOJ official strategized with Trump on ways to challenge the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
CNN’s David Chalian appeared alongside Borger and pointed to what he saw as Republicans changing their minds on impeachment and becoming less likely to support it as time brought them away from “the heat of the moment.” He went on to say that he was “not terribly surprised” that he hasn’t yet seen “17 Republicans in the Senate emerge as potentially voting to convict the president.” (RELATED: Bill Kristol: ‘I Would Love’ If Republicans Threw Trump Overboard, ‘They Are Scared To’)
“I think that’s because the Republicans, by and large, have decided not to go to the issue itself, but rather argue this point in the Senate on the question of whether it is, in fact, constitutional to convict a president who is no longer in office,” Borger continued. “And then their other argument is, well, this is a time when the country needs to be united and not divided, and why would we divide the country even further by voting to convict? So those are their two arguments, and they’re going to sort of push aside the crux of the matter, which is did the President incite this violence?”