WASHINGTON – Rep. Peter Meijer, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump Wednesday, said he and some of his colleagues are buying body armor and altering their daily routines due to fear of violence.
“It’s sad that we have to get to that point, but you know our expectation is that someone may try to kill us,” Meijer, R-Mich., said Thursday in an interview on MSNBC.
Meijer said the body armor is a reimbursable purchase.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen next. We weren’t expecting for the Capitol to get overrun for the first time in 200 years,” he said. “And so in this unprecedented environment with an unprecedented degree of fear of divisiveness and hatred, we have to account for every scenario.”
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Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on Wednesday for inciting an “insurrection” in last week’s attack on the Capitol that left five people dead. Ten Republicans broke from their party to impeach the president, including GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Meijer previously said in a statement that supported impeaching the president because Trump “betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered last week.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the panel overseeing the administration of the Capitol, told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday that reimbursements for body armor were not a new policy.
“That is not new. That’s been the case, for multiple years. People asked, you know, what were allowable expenses, and…those have been allowable expenses for years,” she said.
Contributing: Nicholas Wu
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/14/impeachment-vote-causes-republican-peter-meijer-buy-body-armor/4158935001/
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