Rep. Johnson says Dems wanted to use impeachment to liken all Trump supporters to Capitol rioters

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that Democrats wanted to utilize their impeachment push against Donald Trump as a way to liken all of his supporters to the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach.

"They really wanted to use impeachment as a vehicle because they wanted to equate all those tens of millions of Trump's voters and all of his supporters and everybody who came to the rally, they wanted to equate all of those people with the couple hundred criminals who came in and ransacked the Capitol," Johnson said during an interview on Breitbart News Sunday.

Fifty-seven senators voted on Saturday that former President Trump was guilty of the single article of impeachment passed last month by the House of Representatives, but the 57-43 vote fell short of the two-thirds supermajority required for a conviction, meaning that Trump was acquitted.

Rep. Johnson said that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional since Trump was no longer in office: "The whole trial was unconstitutional … because the 45th president doesn't hold any public office now. He's a private citizen who lives in Florida. The Constitution limits the authority of the Senate in cases of impeachment to removal from office."