The Republican Party of East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, condemned GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy for his vote affirming that the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is constitutional.
The party, in a move it said is historic, unanimously voted to censure Cassidy on Wednesday, arguing that his vote was “a betrayal of the people of Louisiana and a rebuke to those who supported President Trump and him.”
The “extraordinary” vote “is a tribute to the wisdom and many great accomplishments” of the former commander in chief, the resolution stated. The censure resolution rebuked the impeachment efforts at-large, arguing that the charges against the former president are “completely false, malicious, and without merit,” before calling it a “sham and a cruel hoax on the American people and attempt to perpetuate and legitimate a lie.”
The text of the censure accused Democrats of pushing impeachment to bar Trump from running for office in the future, which “would be undemocratic and a complete violation of the intent of the Constitution and place the United States in the category with Russia and various dictatorships and oligarchies around the world where the leading opposition figure is forbidden to run for President,” it said.
Cassidy, who represents the Bayou State with GOP Sen. John Kennedy, joined with five other Republicans on Tuesday in voting that Trump’s trial is constitutional. All of the other Republicans voted that it was unconstitutional given that President Biden has taken office, making it impossible for Trump to be removed from office.
Cassidy said the impeachment managers made a solid argument for having the trial proceed.
“I always said I’d be an impartial juror. Anyone listening to those arguments would recognize that the House managers were focused. They relied upon precedent, upon the opinion of legal scholars,” he said after the vote. “Anyone who listened to President Trump’s legal team saw they were unfocused, they attempted to avoid the issue, and they talked about everything but the issue at hand.”
While Cassidy voted in favor of the trial’s constitutionality, he will have to listen to the trial to decide on whether to convict or acquit the former president, he said. Five other Republicans joined him in affirming the constitutionality of the trial.
For a Senate conviction, two-thirds of the Senate must vote that way. If every senator votes, it would take 67 senators to convict the president on one article of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in encouraging his supporters who attended a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol to express their displeasure with Congress’s intent to certify Biden’s electoral victory.
Other Republicans, mainly in the House, have faced rebukes within the party and at home.
Liz Cheney, who serves as the House Republican Conference chairwoman, was the highest-ranking Republican in the House to vote to impeach the president, and it resulted in her getting censured in her home state of Wyoming. She was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach.
The South Carolina Republican Party voted to censure Rep. Tom Rice in January, LaSalle County Republican Central Committee censured GOP Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger earlier in February, the Cass County Republican Party and Allegan County Republican Party censured Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, while the Washington State Republican Party rebuked Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler.
