BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will go on as planned Wednesday, after the U.S. Senate voted 56-44 to proceed.
Six Republican senators — including Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy — joined all 50 Democratic senators in voting “yes” Tuesday. Supporters agreed it is constitutional to impeach a president no longer in office.
“A sufficient amount of evidence of constitutionality exists for the Senate to proceed with the trial,” Cassidy said in a statement following the vote. “If anyone disagrees with my vote and would like an explanation, I ask them to listen to the arguments presented by the House Managers and former President Trump’s lawyers. The House managers had much stronger constitutional arguments. The president’s team did not.”
Trump is charged with inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, which temporarily blocked Congress from affirming President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. He is the first president to be impeached twice — and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving the White House.
All 100 senators will serve as jurors. Cassidy insisted his procedural vote Tuesday does not, in itself, mean he will vote to impeach the former president.
“If you’re a juror, you’re supposed to go in with an open mind,” he told reporters during a conference call Tuesday morning. “My responsibility is to listen to the evidence before announcing my vote.”
Cassidy’s vote pits him against Louisiana’s other U.S. senator. Republican John Kennedy, joining 43 other senators in his party, voted against an impeachment trial.
“You don’t have to be Judge Judy to understand that these proceedings are of dubious constitutionality,” Kennedy told Nexstar Media Group in an interview Tuesday. “The president’s not the president anymore.”
Louisiana’s GOP brass is siding with Kennedy on the issue and criticizing Cassidy’s move.
“The Republican Party of Louisiana is profoundly disappointed by Senator Bill Cassidy’s vote on the constitutionality of the impeachment trial now underway against former President, now private citizen, Donald J. Trump,” the party said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “We feel that an impeachment trial of a private citizen is not only an unconstitutional act, but also an attack on the very foundation of American democracy, which will have far reaching and unforeseen consequences for our republic.”
“We salute Sen. John Kennedy for remaining steadfast in his opposition to the fake impeachment trial now underway in Washington, D.C.,” the party added. “Sen. Kennedy has clearly made the right decision once again.”
Aside from Cassidy, the five other Republican senators who voted to proceed with Trump’s impeachment trial include: Susan Collins of Maine; Mitt Romney of Utah; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Ben Sasse of Nebraska; and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Conviction requires agreement from two-thirds of the Senate — essentially all 50 Democrats, plus 17 of the 50 Republicans.
