Lindsey Graham threatens to target Kamala Harris if Dems prolong Trump's trial: 'Be careful what you wish for'
Senator Lindsey Graham has warned his Democratic colleagues to "be careful what you wish for," threatening that the focus could be shifted to Vice President Kamala Harris if there are any attempts to prolong former President Donald Trump's upcoming impeachment trial. The South Carolina Republican has repeatedly insisted that Democrats should not call witnesses unless they want their colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle to do the same. If that happens, the process could be drawn out for weeks or even months, Newsweek reported.
During a conversation with Sean Hannity on his Fox News show, Graham stressed that the proceedings should run as quickly as possible — before he targeted Harris. "If you're going to pursue this, and you wanna start calling witnesses, and you want to drag this thing out, it would be fair to have Kamala Harris' tape play where she bailed people out of jail," he said. "What more could you do to incite future violence, than to pay the bail of the people who broke up the shops and beat up the cops. How's that not inciting future violence? Be careful what you wish for my Democratic colleagues, be careful what you wish for."
Last June, Harris had shared a link to a bail fund in the midst of the violent protests, encouraging people to "chip in" and "help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota." According to Graham, Trump's Senate trial should only take a few days — but it depends on what the Democrats do. "If there's an effort by the Democrats to call a single witness in the United States Senate, they had no record in the House, there will be a delay of this trial, there will be a Pandora's box being opened," Graham said on Fox previously. "We will want witnesses and this thing will go on for weeks if not months."
Graham, on February 2, suggested that Republicans would "want the FBI to come in" and outline details of the US Capitol riots if Democrats call witnesses during the impeachment trial.
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The same day, however, Graham drew backlash for defending Congresswoman Liz Cheney amid a push to remove her as chair of the House Republican Conference following her vote to impeach Trump. "I believe @RepLizCheney is one of the strongest and most reliable conservative voices in the Republican Party," Graham said on Twitter. "She is a fiscal and social conservative, and no one works harder to ensure that our military is well prepared."
Trump's reps released details of his defense for his upcoming trial, arguing that the Senate does not have the power to convict a former president. Republican senators have strongly argued that putting a former president on trial for impeachment would be beyond the Senate's jurisdiction. Last week, Senator Rand Paul took to the Senate floor to argue that the chamber cannot and should not take up the trial.
"If we are about to try to impeach a president, where is the chief justice? If the accused is no longer president, where is the constitutional power to impeach him?" Paul said, according to Fox News. "Impeachment is for removal from office and the accused here has already left office. Hyper-partisan Democrats are about to drag our great country into the gutter of rancor and vitriol the likes of which has never been seen in our nation's history."