Former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time on Tuesday, and this time he’s being accused of the most serious crimes yet: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Back in February 2021, the Senate had its chance to weigh in on whether Trump committed crimes in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The chamber voted 57 to 43 to convict him for inciting an insurrection. That wasn’t enough votes to secure a conviction; the threshold was 67 votes. But it was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, with seven Republicans joining Democrats in favor of conviction.
It took guts from those seven GOP senators to buck their party leaders. They broke from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). They knew they’d face the wrath of an unhinged former president known for unleashing on his detractors. They knew they could face attacks, verbal and potentially physical, from his following of diehard supporters.
But based on the facts before them, and what is clearly spelled out in the Constitution, those seven senators maintained that they had to pick country over party, and they voted to convict.
Republicans don’t like to talk about that vote very much. It was ugly. It was historic, in a bad way. It was solemn. And it deeply fractured their party.
But since Tuesday’s federal indictment came down, there is one GOP senator — one of those seven who stuck their necks out two-and-a-half years ago — who wants to remind people about that vote. And it’s simply to say that she feels even more strongly that she was right to vote to impeach Trump that day: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“In early 2021, I voted to impeach former President Trump based on clear evidence that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election after losing it,” Murkowski said in a series of tweets on Tuesday evening.
“Additional evidence presented since then, including by the January 6 Commission, has only reinforced that the former President played a key role in instigating the riots, resulting in physical violence and desecration of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” she continued.
Murkowski said Trump is, of course, innocent until proven guilty and will have his day in court. But she encouraged everyone to read the indictment, in order to understand “the very serious allegations” being made against him.
The other six Republicans who voted to convict Trump in February 2021 were Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.).
Some of them aren’t senators anymore. None appear to have said anything publicly about the contentious vote they took back then, in terms of a sense of vindication over the way they voted that day, in light of the latest indictment against Trump.
HuffPost will update this story if that changes.
CORRECTION: A prior version of this story misstated the number of votes required to convict Trump in the Senate.