Donald Trump did not like the way he was treated when the House of Representatives carried out his impeachment articles. The President has raged since the beginning of the process, calling it rigged and unfair and blasting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Trump’s trial will now move to friendlier ground in the Republican held senate. Mitch McConnell has all but pointed to a sham trial and has discussed coordination with the White House. Richard Painter, who served as the Chief Ethics Lawyer under George W. Bush, raged against McConnell on Thursday night, invoking Ku Klux Klan trials of the 1960’s.
Painter squared off against former Republican congressman Rick Santorum in a CNN debate. The lawyer began by saying, “The oath of loyalty is to the United States of America, not to Donald Trump. These senators, Democrats and Republicans have an obligation to hear the facts, to hear witnesses, and make a decision.”
The lawyer then blasted the Senate Majority Leader. “For Mitch McConnell to say he’s working with the White House, coordinating with the defendant in this trial before the trial has even begun is atrocious,” Painter said. “He may think he’s a judge impaneling an all-white jury for a Klansman trial in Mississippi in 1965. That’s not the kind of trial we have.”
After calling Painter’s comments “absurd,” Santorum responded, “I saw what Tom Daschle did in 1998, and I don’t think you were complaining one bit about him carrying the water for the president. This is typical, and I think completely appropriate.”
Painter, who was a registered Republican during the Clinton trials, said he didn’t approve of Daschle’s actions at all.