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- Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said the Senate should consider removing fellow Republicans, Senses. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
- Manchin said the 14th Amendment should be applied after Cruz and Hawley lobbied to challenge the Electoral College’s votes last week.
- Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill in a joint session to debate election results, leading to the deaths of five people.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Senator Joe Manchin said the Senate should consider using the 14th Amendment to remove the senses. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, two Republicans who opposed the Electoral College vote last week.
“It should be a consideration,” said Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, when asked if the 14th Amendment should be triggered in an interview with PBS’s “Firing Line”.
On January 6, supporters of President Donald Trump violated the U.S. Capitol and clashed with law enforcement, interrupting the joint session of Congress as lawmakers debated contested electoral votes.
Critics called on senators to resign and blamed them for the five deaths following the siege on Capitol Hill.
The House has since impeached Trump for inciting insurgency. The Senate will soon hold a trial and vote on whether to convict the president.
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has previously said Cruz and Hawley’s support for the electoral challenges, which stemmed from President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of massive electoral fraud, helped inspire the crowd that sacked and destroyed Capitol Hill.
“Senator Cruz, you have to accept responsibility for how your cowardly and self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you raised money from that riot. You and Senator Hawley must resign. Otherwise. , the Senate should move for your expulsion, ”Ocasio-Cortez said.
Manchin had also previously said senators were responsible for the violence.
“There’s no way they can’t be complicit in this,” he said. “Let them think they can walk away and say, ‘I just exercised my right to be a senator?’ Especially after we got back here and after seeing what happened. “
He added: “I don’t know how you can live with yourself now knowing that people have lost their lives.”
The 14th Amendment says that no sitting legislator “shall have engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to his enemies. But Congress can, by a two-thirds vote of each House , remove such a handicap. ”
Many Republicans gave up on their plans to challenge the election results in the wake of the violence, but Hawley and Cruz pushed forward in an effort that would have been futile but won them points with the Trump base.
Earlier this week, Democratic aides also told The Hill that some senators are also considering censoring Cruz and Hawley. While censorship does not remove them from office, it could seriously harm their political aspirations.
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