McConnell Wanted Trump to 'Pay a Price' for Jan. 6

Mitch McConnell says he and Donald Trump are "on the same team now," but a new biography of the Senate Republican leader reveals he wasn't always cheering his party's presidential nominee on. McConnell told journalist Michael Tackett in an interview last year that special counsel Jack Smith had a good case against Trump. "If he hasn't committed indictable offenses, I don't know what one is," McConnell said. The interview was for The Price of Power, per Axios, which scheduled to be published next week.

McConnell voted against impeachment in Trump's second trial, saying that he was no longer president and could be held accountable by the courts. But Tackett writes that McConnell was close to voting the other way; a conviction would have barred Trump from running for president again. The Republican leader was clear on the merits of the allegations against Trump, Tackett writes. Blaming the former president for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, McConnell said, "there's no doubt who inspired it, and I just hope that he'll have to pay a price for it." McConnell endorsed Trump for president in March. (More Mitch McConnell stories.)