Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the chance of GOP senators to vote to impeach President Donald Trump.
“It’s inconceivable to me there would be 67 votes to remove the President from office,” McConnell told reporters, according to Reuters.
McConnell appeared in an interview with CBS News where he claimed that it was “way too early to scope out or announce how we might handle impeachment when it gets to the Senate.”
According to Newsweek, the Senate Majority Leader’s remarks come after the third day of public hearings led by House Democrats as part of the impeachment inquiry regarding the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Tuesday, lawmakers heard from decorated Iraq War veteran Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine advisor on the National Security Council, and from Jennifer Williams, Vice President Mike Pence’s top advisor on Russia.
Both Vindman and Williams confirmed that the July phone call, in which Trump appeared to ask that Ukraine investigate former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, sparked widespread concern.
“Without hesitation, I knew that I had to report this to the White House counsel,” Vindman said. “I had concerns and it was my duty to report my concerns to the proper people in the chain of command.”
Asked why he was not afraid to testify, Vindman said he knew he was “assuming a lot of risk.”
However, he said he felt compelled to speak out “because this is America.”
“This is the country I have served and defended, that all of my brothers have served and here, right matters,” Vindman, who came to the U.S. as a child, said as the crowd broke out into applause.
Despite Vindman’s proclaimed dedication to his country, Republicans had repeatedly sought to question his credibility and suggest that he could have ulterior motives for testifying against Trump.
In the lead-up to the Iraq War veteran’s testimony, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent out a letter to his GOP House colleagues suggesting that Vindman could have been part of an effort to remove the President from office, without presenting any evidence.
“A significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their ‘turf’,” the Republican said, according to Politico.
“They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile,” Johnson wrote.
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