- Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said the Senate should consider sensitizing its Republican counterparts. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, to remove.
- Manchin said the 14th amendment should be implemented after Cruz and Hawley continued efforts last week to contest the votes of the Electoral College.
- Trump supporters stormed the Capitol during a joint sitting to debate the election results, which led to the deaths of five people.
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Sen. Joe Manchin said the Senate should consider using the 14th Amendment to make sense. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, two Republicans who objected to the Electoral College’s vote last week.
“That should be a consideration,” Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said when asked if the 14th amendment should be encouraged during an interview with PBS’s “Firing Line.”
On January 6, supporters of President Donald Trump trespassed on the U.S. Capitol and clashed with law enforcement and halted the joint session of Congress when lawmakers discussed debates over the election.
Critics asked the senators to resign and blamed them for the five deaths that occurred as a result of the siege of the Capitol.
The House has since charged Trump on charges of inciting an uprising. The Senate will soon hold a trial and vote on whether the president is convicted.
Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier said Cruz and Hawley’s support for the election challenges, stemming from President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations of mass voter fraud, helped inspire the crowd that looted and destroyed the Capitol.
“Sen. Cruz, you must take responsibility for the fact that your greedy, self-serving actions yesterday contributed to the deaths of four people. And how you obtained these riot funds. You as well as Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not “No, the Senate must move for your expulsion,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Manchin also said earlier that the senators were guilty of the violence.
“They can not be complicit in it,” he said. “That they think they can walk away and say, ‘I just exercised my right as a senator?’ Especially after we came here and after they saw what happened. ‘
He added: “I do not know how you can live with yourself now knowing that people have lost their lives.”
The 14th Amendment states that no official holding office would have had an uprising or rebellion against him or helped or consoled its enemies. But Congress may, by a two-thirds vote of each House, remove such disability. ‘
Many Republicans abandoned their plans to contest the election results after the violence, but Hawley and Cruz moved forward in an effort that would have been useless but earned points with Trump’s bases.
Earlier this week, Democratic assistants also told The Hill that some senators are also considering condemning Cruz and Hawley. Although a mistrust can not remove them from office, it can seriously harm their political aspirations.