This letter is addressed to the Republican Senator from Maine, Susan Collins.

Dear Senator Collins,

In January of 2020, as President Donald Trump faced a Senate trial following his Impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives, you justified your vote against conviction by saying that the President learned “a pretty big lesson” from his impeachment.

Today, I am writing to you to tell you that you were correct. Trump learned a big lesson. He learned that, as long as the members of his party continue to choose political convenience over accountability; access to his political base and protection from Twitter tirades over the rule of law, Trump believes he is invulnerable.

Because, you see, there is a direct connection between his shakedown phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to the President’s first Impeachment and his shakedown call of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he asks Election officials to “find” him the votes needed to overturn the State’s Presidential Election and steal its’ 16 Electoral Votes from the President-Elect, Joe Biden.

You, Madame Senator, and your dereliction of duty to hold the President accountable, are the line that runs between the two phone calls. And it continues past the Georgia shakedown call to the Siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, where you and your colleagues were run out of the seat of American power by domestic insurgents hellbent on overturning a free and fair election urged on by their leader, whom you yourself have enabled.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong”

That’s the lesson President Trump learned in his first Impeachment trial. That the rule of law does not apply to him, that his seat in the Oval Office protects him from accountability. That he can urge thousands of his supporters to seize the United States Congress as it certifies the free and fair election of an opponent, put the life of his Vice President at the mercy of a mob who believes he is a traitor to the Leader—and called for Pence’s execution—continue to discharge the office of President of the United States with impunity.

I am sure the scenes of January 6th, 2021, greatly concerned you, Madame Senator. They greatly concerned me, too. Which leads me to this letter, Senator Collins.

Trump has learned his lesson. The question is, have you?

Impeach the President, try him, remove him from office. Regardless of his ‘concession’ and the end of his term this month. That is the only way to right your party’s gargantuan failure to uphold our Constitution. If you refuse, you will have chosen lawlessness, sided with the insurrectionists, and established that the United States Constitution is pliable to the will of a scared, sad criminal—the 45th President of the United States—and the millions who believe his lies.