White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told a reporter on Monday that Matin Luther King Jr. would have opposed impeaching President Donald Trump.
When the reporter asked her how the president planned to spend Martin Luther King Day, she responded, “Well, I can tell you that the president is preparing for Davos and agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for and agreed with for many years, including unity and equality and he’s not the one trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”
“I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time,” Conway continued, “but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was within Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged with bribery, extortion, high crimes or misdemeanors.”
She added, “And I think that anybody who cares about ‘and justice for all’ on today or any day of the year will appreciate the fact that the president now will have a full throttle defense on the facts."
The Hill reports:
The comments by Conway come as the White House prepares for Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate on two House-passed articles charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The trial is set to begin on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, the president’s legal team filed a brief pushing the Senate to "swiftly" reject the charges, calling them an “affront to the Constitution and to our democratic institutions.”
“The Articles themselves—and the rigged process that brought them here—are a brazenly political act by House Democrats that must be rejected,” they added in the brief.
The House’s impeachment managers also filed a lengthy brief shortly after on Monday that pushes back on Trump’s impeachment defense and accuses the president of abusing his “power to cheat in elections, betray our national security, and ignore checks and balances.”
“That President Trump believes otherwise, and insists he is free to engage in such conduct again, only highlights the continuing threat he poses to the Nation if allowed to remain in office,” they added.