Alaska Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski both voted on Wednesday to acquit the president for the charges brought by the House Democrats.
Sullivan released a video to explain his vote. In it, he says that the one thing that all seem to acknowledge is that it was a partisan exercise from the outset.
“Nearly everyone—both in the House and in the Senate, and when you look at the sweep of American history—agree on one thing: that purely partisan impeachments are not in our nation’s best interest.
“The Framers of our Constitution, like Alexander Hamilton, actually highlighted this as a specific danger to the Republic. They feared, as do I, the weaponization of impeachment as a regular tool of partisan warfare.
“If that were to happen — partisan impeachment every few years – it would incapacitate our government, undermine the legitimacy of our institutions, and tear our country apart for decades to come,” Sullivan said.
“Nevertheless, the House still took the dramatic and consequential step last fall of launching the first purely partisan impeachment in U.S. history. That’s a precedent we should not endorse,” he said. His entire remarks are in a short video released on Wednesday:
