McConnell said he hopes Trump will 'pay a price' for Jan. 6 role, new book reveals
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in an interview last year that he hopes former President Trump will “pay a price” for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to Axios, which obtained an early copy of a book by journalist Michael Tackett.
“If he hasn’t committed indictable offenses, I don’t know what one is,” McConnell told Tackett, weeks after special counsel Jack Smith brought the election subversion case against the former president, according to Axios.
The interview was conducted for Tackett’s forthcoming book, “The Price of Power,” which is set to be published later this month, a week before Election Day.
“There’s no doubt who inspired it, and I just hope that he’ll have to pay a price for it,” McConnell told Tackett, referring to Trump and the events that unfolded at the Capitol on the day the 2020 election results were certified, Axios reported.
In the book, Tackett reportedly reflected on the interview with the longest-serving Republican leader, writing, “From the start, McConnell thought the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Trump had merit,” according to Axios.
Tackett reported on the extent to which McConnell was considering voting to convict Trump in the Senate, when the former president was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House after the Capitol attack. A conviction would have required two-thirds of the upper chamber’s votes; seven Republican senators joined all of their Democratic colleagues in voting to convict, falling short of the threshold.
Tackett reported on an oral history interview McConnell did a week after the Capitol attack, according to Axios, in which McConnell said he was “not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense,” adding, “I think it is.”
McConnell added that urging an insurrection, with people attacking the Capitol, “is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine,” Axios reported, citing the oral history interview for Tackett’s “The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party.”
McConnell, however, ultimately voted against convicting the former president, saying Trump was no longer the president and could be held accountable by the criminal justice system or civil litigation, Axios reported. He endorsed Trump’s bid for another term as president in March.
“Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now,” McConnell said in a statement, provided by his office.