Conservative shreds Senate GOP for letting Trump off the hook after Jan. 6

Conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru on Friday pointed the finger at Republicans in the United States Senate who he said ultimately let former President Donald Trump off the hook for inciting the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol building.

In an editorial for the Washington Post, Ponnuru weighs arguments being made by some of his fellow conservatives that criminal charges against the former president are not warranted and that impeachment should be the best remedy for such offenses.

Ponnuru concedes that impeaching Trump would have been a better way to go, as it is clear that Trump should have been removed and disqualified from office for an attempt "to subvert the constitutional order" that may or may not have technically run afoul of the United States criminal code.

However, he then goes on to argue that Senate Republicans blew their shot at making this happen when they were given the opportunity in 2021.

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"Republican officeholders... thought they had no need to act against Trump because, having been defeated on Election Day and then disgraced on Jan. 6, he would 'fade away' as a political force," he writes. "How’s that working out?"

He concludes his column by arguing that America needs to start thinking about ways to hold presidents accountable, as the Constitution's requirement for two-thirds of the Senate to vote for impeachment has rendered the country incapable of holding presidents accountable for gross misconduct.

"The frailty of the impeachment power means that holding presidents accountable for high crimes requires accidents of statutory draftsmanship — or, failing those, the vigilance of the ultimate guardians of the Constitution: the voters," he writes.