Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday forced Senator Lindsey Graham to watch a 1998 clip of himself talking about the dangers of ignoring subpoenas from Congress during an era when he was leading the impeachment effort against former President Bill Clinton.
During Graham’s appearance on Fox News Sunday earlier today, Wallace challenged the Republican senator on his past comments about impeachment, which appears to contradict his current stance on calls by Democrats to impeach President Donald Trump.
“You call all of what’s going on in Washington a political circus, but you took a different view back when you were leading the impeachment effort against Clinton back in the late ’90s. At that time, you said that any president, and you talked specifically about Clinton and Richard Nixon, who defied Congress when it came to subpoenas was in danger of impeachment,” Wallace said, before airing an old clip of Graham’s comments made in Capitol Hill.
“You’re becoming the judge and jury. It is not your job to tell us what we need. It is your job to comply with the things we need to provide oversight over you,” Graham can be seen saying in the December 18, 1998 clip. At the time, he was a member of the House of Representatives and one of the managers — de facto prosecutors — in Clinton’s impeachment trial before the Senate.