The Ohio Republican said Trump’s “inexcusable actions and words must be addressed” by the criminal justice system.
Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, released a statement condemning former President Donald Trump following the end of the impeachment Senate trial on Saturday, despite voting to acquit the former commander in chief. Seven Republican senators voted with all 50 members of the Democratic Caucus to convict Trump for inciting the insurrection against the U.S. Capitol on January 6, meaning the 57 to 43 decision was the most bipartisan presidential conviction vote in U.S. history. However, it still failed to reach the high constitutional threshold of a two-thirds majority (or 67 senators), which would have required 10 additional Republicans to vote “guilty.” Portman, who announced at the end of January that he will not seek re-election, explained in his post-impeachment trial statement that Trump’s actions were “inexcusable” but argued that the trial itself was unconstitutional because the former president was no longer in office. A number of GOP senators made the same argument to justify their acquittal vote, although most legal scholars—conservatives and liberals—agree that the Senate trial was constitutional. “The siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was an attack on democracy itself,” Portman said in his rebuke of the former Republican president. “I have said that what President Trump did that day was inexcusable because in his speech he encouraged the mob, and that he bears some responsibility for the tragic violence that occurred.
