Will County area members of Congress decry Trump’s acquittal in Senate

Members of Congress representing the Will County area decried the U.S. Senate’s acquittal of former President Donald Trump on the charge of inciting the deadly insurrection of Jan. 6.

Despite 57 senators, including seven Republicans, voting to convict Trump, the majority failed to reach the 67 vote threshold.

U.S. Rep. Marie Newman, D-La Grange, listed the names of the 43 Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump in a series of tweets.

She said those senators “refused to hold (Trump) accountable.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, said in a statement the GOP senators “should be judged harshly for the damage they’ve done to our democracy.”

“Donald Trump occupies a uniquely disgraceful place in American history as the only president impeached twice, but the Congressional Republicans who’ve refused to hold him accountable for his actions occupy an equally shameful place in history,” Foster said in the statement.

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, has also blamed Trump for the violence on Jan. 6 and was one of only 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach the former president.

“To those who have argued that impeachment was rushed or that impeachment will further divide us, we must remember that former President Trump put all of us — Congress and the American people — in this lose-lose situation,” Kinzinger said in a statement.

Kinzinger has said he is “at peace” with his own vote for impeachment, despite the blowback he has received. He has started his own venture to “restore” the Republican party in the post-Trump era.

The congressman added that the “damage” being done to the country is “unacceptable.”

“The losses I’ll face pale in comparison to the stakes here,” he said in the statement. “I am disappointed that the Senate was unwilling to hold former President Trump accountable for his actions. And I will be looking at alternate options to ensure responsibility and accountability so that what happened on January 6, 2021 will never happen again.