WASHINGTON — One of Georgia's two newly-sworn U.S. Senators is weighing in after voting to convict Donald Trump and expressing his dismay at the fact that the former president was acquitted.
"If Donald Trump's actions were not impeachable, then nothing is," Sen. Raphael Warnock said in a statement released a short time later.
While seven Republican senators did cross the aisle to vote alongside Democrats, Saturday, The 57 total votes for conviction weren't enough to reach the threshold need in the impeachment trial.
The quick trial, as the Associated Press reports, showed how perilously close the invaders had come to destroying the nation's deep tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power after Trump had refused to concede the election.
In his statement, Warnock also looked back on the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol that ultimately spurred the push to impeach.
“We witnessed firsthand a vile attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters, and an egregious interruption of the peaceful transfer of power by the President of the United States," Warnock said. "Accountability is critical to our nation moving forward and addressing the challenges so many families and communities face."
Warnock continued that those who voted not guilty "had an opportunity and moral obligation to choose principle over politics" but said that "sadly, they chose politics in a trial whee human consequences could hardly be more tragic and the stakes could not be higher."
Though he was acquitted, Saturday's vote included the largest number of senators to ever vote to find a president of their own party guilty of an impeachment charge. Still, Warnock suggested that the American people and those who defended the Capitol that day had "been done a grave disservice."
"But somehow, we must begin to turn the page, and continue the people's work."
