Sen. Durbin supports impeaching former President Trump “to make a record” of the deadly capitol riots

Posted on January 28, 2021
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. (Photo courtesy: WJBC/File)

By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – Illinois’ Senior U.S. Senator Dick Durbin says he supports impeaching former President Donald Trump to “make a record” of the deadly riots at the Capitol on January 6.

Sen. Durbin (D-Ill) told WJBC’s Scott Miller, Congress needs to move forward with impeachment articles against former President Trump, who many believe incited the riots that left five dead, including a Capitol police officer.

“We’ve got to make a record. Can you believe the fact that a large segment of the American population denies that ever happened and denies who was behind it? We’ve got to make a record of fact, of evidence, I think that is what we owe to the future generations. Imagine what happened on that day, and it was just three weeks ago.

“We were sitting in the Senate chamber, they (security) interrupted it to yank the Vice President off the podium to make sure he goes to a secure room. A man walked down the center aisle of the United States Senate chamber, not three or four feet from where I was sitting carrying an automatic weapon to protect the people in the chamber.”

So far, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has arrested more than 100 people and have identified hundreds more as suspects in the deadly riot.

“This was America. This was a group a mob that was out of control. They killed a Capitol policeman and beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. And now there are people saying, ‘oh, we don’t want to talk about it, let’s get over it.’ No. I’m not going to get over it until we make a historic record of what happened that day. Those folks were completely out of line. Folks are being arrested and charged now for what they did and boasted about it on TikTok and Facebook and all the rest of them. It was an insurrection; it was a mob that was determined to stop our government from happening. Thank goodness they failed.”

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the Senate would push forward with an impeachment hearing. The statement comes after a procedural vote on Tuesday, which revealed the Senate lacks the votes needed to impeach former President Trump.

The impeachment trial will begin on February 9.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].

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