Pelosi rips McConnell as ‘rogue leader’ after Trump acquittal

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as a “rogue leader” after the Senate voted to acquit President Trump on Wednesday.

The Speaker accused Trump and Senate Republicans of having “normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances.”

“Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president,” Pelosi said in a statement after the final impeachment votes in the Senate. “They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Pelosi slammed Senate Republicans for voting against allowing additional witnesses and documentation to be introduced at the trial, saying Trump will now “boast” about his acquittal.

“By suppressing the evidence and rejecting the most basic elements of a fair judicial process, the Republican Senate made themselves willing accomplices to the President’s cover-up,” she said.

“Sadly, because of the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution, the President remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to,” she said. “The House will continue to protect and defend the checks and balances in the Constitution that safeguard our Republic, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.”

When reached for comment, a spokesman for McConnell referenced a tweet depicting McConnell as a figure from Star Wars.

The votes in the Senate to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress fell mainly among party lines. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted to convict Trump on the abuse of power charge, was the only senator to cross the aisle.

Updated at 7:18 p.m.