A Republican Senator who voted against impeaching Donald Trump for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the nation's Capitol said Sunday that the former president's fate should be left in the hands of the Department of Justice and the federal courts.
In an interview with ABC's "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos, South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds agreed that the 2020 presidential election was "fair, as fair as we've seen" despite Trump and his supporters continuing to baselessly say the election was stolen and rampant with fraud.
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Sen. Mike Rounds walks to Senate Republican policy luncheons at the Capitol, Oct. 7, 2021.
"Every single individual in the United States is subject to the courts' systems. What happens with a president is that he has the shield of office, which in many cases prohibits or limits the ability of the courts to address issues surrounding that. What an impeachment does is take away that shield. President Trump was no longer president at the time that that occurred," Rounds said. "The courts are the appropriate place where those questions should be answered."
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Rounds was at the Capitol when the insurrection occurred -- with thousands of Trump supporters bashing through the doors and windows and overwhelming police.
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Rounds, the former governor of South Dakota, was among the last to leave the Senate chambers and helped scoop up and secure the boxes of validated electoral votes.
While Rounds joined 44 of his Senate colleagues in declaring Trump's second impeachment trial unconstitutional because he was a private citizen, he was among the few Republicans who suggested the former president could be prosecuted under federal law pertaining to rebellion and insurrection.
"While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state," Rounds said.
He said that moving forward, it is important for the Republican party to convey that message to the public.
"We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward -- and that's the way we want to look at this -- moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it's going to take to win the presidency," Rounds said. "And if we simply look back and tell our people don't vote because there's cheating going on, then we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let's focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can -- they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair."
When pressed by Stephanopoulos as to whether he would support the prosecution of Trump if the Department of Justice came forward with evidence that the former president was complicit in the Capitol insurrection, Rounds hesitated.
"In this particular case, it's not going to be up to a member of the Senate to support prosecution," Rounds responded. "So, if they think they have got that, they can bring the evidence forward. In my opinion, they haven't done that yet. And it's going to be up to them to make that case. But that shield of the presidency does not exist for someone who is a former president."
When asked by Stephanopoulos if he would support Trump if he ran for president again, Rounds did not rule out that possibility.
"I will take a hard look at it," Rounds said. "Personally, what I have told people is, is I'm going to support the Republican nominee to be president. I'm not sure that the eventual nominee has even shown up yet. There's still -- we're two years to go, where we're going to focus on the next election cycle. It's critical that we take back the House. It's critical that we take back the United States Senate."
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., also appeared on "This Week" immediately after Rounds and said he was "delighted" to hear the senator and other Republican lawmakers give consideration to prosecuting Trump if evidence shows he aided and abetted the insurrection.
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Sen. Jamie Raskin speaks during a candlelight vigil, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C., on the one year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.
Raskin, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, said a number of people in the Trump administration have come forward with evidence to help the committee in "connecting all the dots."
"Based on what you found so far, do you have evidence that President Trump was complicit, that he actually participated in the insurrection?" Stephanopoulos asked Raskin, who was the lead manager of Trump's second impeachment trial.
Raskin replied, "Well, we already have the fact that he was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting a violent insurrection against the Union, and 57 to 43 definitive legislative pronouncement by the Senate that he incited a violent insurrection. The question is to what extent he was implicit in organizing it."
Raskin, who was also at the Capitol building during the insurrection and sought shelter in a congressional hearing room, said his committee intends to release a "comprehensive and fine-grained portrait of everything that happened, including the central role of the president."
"Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says anybody who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, who violates and betrays that oath by participating in an insurrection or rebellion against the Union shall never be allowed to hold public office again. That was adopted by the Republicans -- the radical Republicans after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period," Raskin said. "It was used then. And it may indeed, depending on what we find Donald Trump did, be a blockade for him ever being able to run for office again."
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When pressed by Stephanopoulos about whether he is confident his committee will complete its investigation by the midterm elections, Raskin avoided answering.
"Well, look, I think that the true obligation of a political party and a constitutional democracy is to accept that there are rules of the game," Raskin said.
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Raskin concluded the interview by saying "The GOP, under Donald Trump's thumb, is now positioning itself outside of the constitutional order."
He said Trump and his Republican allies have "attacked our constitutional processes and they attacked the outcome of our elections with lies, even against all of the evidence."
"That is a totalitarian tactic, and we have to call it for what it is and say, that's not going to work in American democracy in the 21st century," Raskin said. "We have to defend our democratic institutions, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and again all those authoritarian governments abroad that are trying to destabilize American democratic culture."