Sen. Graham: You can’t rip up or destroy the accomplishments of the President
Sen. Lindsey Graham joins ‘The Brian Kilmeade Show’ to discuss House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up President Trump’s State of the Union speech.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., mocked Sen. Mitt Romney’s reasoning for voting to convict President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial Wednesday.
“I would tell Romney or anybody else that I support a reasonable investigation of the president of my own party, I do not support a continued effort to destroy the presidency,” Graham told Fox News Radio's “The Brian Kilmeade Show" on Thursday.
Romney, R-Utah, became the first senator to vote to remove a president of his own party from office when he voted to vote to convict Trump of abuse of power, one of the two articles of impeachment against the president.
“I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am," Romney said in remarks on the Senate floor prior to his vote. "I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong."
MITT ROMNEY PRAISED, CRITICIZED IN UTAH AFTER GUILTY VOTE
In response to Romney's invocation of his faith, Graham said, “All I can tell you is that God gave us free will and common sense. I used the common sense that God gave me to understand this is a bunch of BS.
“It was politically driven, it was driven by people who are not looking for the truth, they hate Trump, they were going to impeach him the day he got elected and if you can’t see through this, your religion is clouding your thinking here," added Graham, who also acknowledged that he has "always liked" Romney.
The Senate acquitted the president on both articles of impeachment Wednesday afternoon, in a historic rejection of Democrats' claims that the president's Ukraine dealings and handling of congressional subpoenas merited his immediate removal from office.
Graham claimed Thursday that Democrats “couldn’t accept the findings from [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller," who ended his years-long investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in late March of last year.
Mueller found that there was no evidence of collusion with agents of Moscow by the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller's report did not reach a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice and left that decision to Attorney General Bill Barr and officials at the Department of Justice, who determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute an obstruction case.
"They [Democrats] took a phone call," Graham said Thursday. “And here’s what bothers me the most, they’re going to remove the president of the United States for temporarily suspending aid to the Ukraine [sic] to leverage an investigation against [former Vice President Joe] Biden that never happened. They [Ukraine] got the money, there was no investigation, there’s a good reason to look at the Bidens, and they are willing to remove the President of the United States over that. That is ridiculous.”
He went on to say that Democrats “impeached him in a way you couldn’t get a parking ticket.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“So this was a partisan-driven, hateful, revenge impeachment and I am sad that all Republicans couldn’t see it for that,” Graham added.
Fox News’ Gregg Re and Brie Stimson contributed to this report.