There should be no threats in connection to the effort to implement justice, Sen. Mike Rounds told NBC News' "Meet The Press" on Sunday.
The South Dakota Republican was responding to a question as to whether it is appropriate behavior for former President Donald Trump to call for protesters to the Manhattan courthouse if he is indicted by the District Attorney's office there.
Rounds said, "Most certainly you don't want to have any threats towards the implementation or the attempt to implement justice. And that's something that you always have to take seriously, whether it's from an individual person or a former president of the United States."
The senator added, "Let me make it clear there's a difference between the former president and what he did on Jan. 6 as the president of the United States and his call for support at the Capitol versus an individual person, today, asking people to show up to protest if he is indicted."
When asked if the senator had second thoughts about his decision not to vote to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rounds said, "It's very clear in the Constitution, in the way that the Founding Fathers had laid that out, that you were looking at whether or not an individual was the president of the United States or was just an individual."
Rounds said that Trump at the time of the trial "was an individual. He was not the president of the United States. Founding Fathers clearly did not want indictments to start on former presidents."
The senator also rejected the idea that the point of such an indictment was that Trump could have been barred from ever running for office again, stating, "The idea behind an impeachment is to take away the shield of office. That's all it does. After that, other things can occur ... and right now the shield of office is gone, and now it's up to the courts."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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